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Lawrence's motorcycle drifted through the RothPharmTech company garage as he took the familiar route around the structure. A pair of parallel red lines outlined his designated space until he pulled into it, at which point they flashed green for about ten seconds and shut off. He pulled his helmet off and set it on the bike and headed for the elevator into the company proper.

He felt keenly aware of every security camera, sensor, and scanner as he stepped into the elevator and rode it up to the floor on which he worked. He was normally used to the usual protocols that logged any storage devices and electronics he brought with him, but the events of the last two and a half days caused him to filter the routine through paranoia: Was the company watching him? Had he misread the situation and someone here had sent the kill team and the mercenary after him?

His nose wrinkled when he stepped out of the elevator into the office and its accompanying cloud of chemical agents officially meant to make life bearable for those with enhanced senses of smell. Which is why it was sold under the brand name 'NoseBlank' to office buildings with recirculating air systems. And it sort of did what it said on the tin. To Lawrence's nose, basically everything had a vague metallic smell reminiscent of cheap, unfiltered tap water. But more importantly, it also dulled any aromas any anthros might give off that human employees would find objectionable.

Conveniently, the unmodified human nose wasn't sharp enough to pick up the metallic chemical smell. The end result was that they were simply less likely to accidentally notice some species in the next cubicle over.

Not that that was particularly likely anyways. On this floor, at least, Lawrence was surrounded completely by humans. Some of them had even broken themselves of the habit of staring at him as he walked past. He kept his ears facing forward to cut down on the chance that he'd be accused of eavesdropping on various conversations on the way his boss's office. He stilled his tail as well, rather than letting it sway with his footsteps and risk smacking someone's leg with it.

In a well-paying, highly-technical office environment, he couldn't afford to give anyone any reasons to decide he was a 'problem' or a 'distraction.'

Lawrence stopped outside his boss's door. A sensor next to it scanned him and he waited for the AI secretary to notify Mr. Grant of his presence. The door opened with a click and he stepped in. The older, gray-haired, African-American gentleman behind the desk gestured to one of the seats in front of him. Lawrence curled his tail around his hip since there wouldn't be anyplace else to put it and sat down.

The office, despite the NoseBlank in use on the company floors, had its own distinct aromas. Mr. Grant's cologne had thoroughly soaked into the furniture here, making a fabric office chair smell like old leather. His suit jacket carried a faint dusting of cigar smoke from his home. The sharp tang of the office coffee on his desk fought to be noticed under the whiskey stirred in with it despite the early hour. Personally, Lawrence would rather sit in here and deal with the scents than the metallic smell of the corridors, but it wasn't up to him.

"Lawrence, where have you been the last couple of days?" the older man asked with a calm, rehearsed tone.

"Okay, not dancing around it then," Lawrence nervously chuckled. The man glared at him and he straightened up. "Sorry, sir. My dad's been suffering under a bit of a health crisis and I had to do some extra work on my end to try and take care of it."

"You should have called, though, or at least picked up the damn phone when we called you no less than eight times."

Lawrence's ears drooped submissively and he opened his mouth to reply.

"And don't lay your ears down at me!" Mr. Grant said, misinterpreting the body language.

Lawrence winced and put his ears back up. He forced himself to take a calming breath. He took hold of the tail curled into his lap and gave it a squeeze as he focused on what to say.

"I'm very sorry, sir," he quickly said, as quietly as he could without mumbling. "It was a serious problem and I had to have nurses come over and... I just lost track of things. I must have thought I'd called in. I probably started to dial and then got called away before I could finish the call but thought I'd done it."

"Lawrence, I respect the fact that your dad is suffering some major health problems. I know it's been a rough year for you. But you need to be better about this, especially if you want this job to keep paying you so you can take care of him."

"Yes, sir, of course, sir."

"Now, out of deference to your situation, I can let you use your sick days for the two days you were gone, but if this happens again... don't bother coming in. We'll ship you your personal effects and bill you for how much you still owe on your implant."

Lawrence tried not to wince at that.

"You're too generous, sir," Lawrence said with a forced smile that he hoped looked grateful but knew didn't.

"You have to know this isn't entirely my call," Mr. Grant said, a little softer. "I have people I have to explain myself to when one of my engineers goes missing, especially with company-financed hardware in his head. Understand?"

Lawrence nodded.

"Then get to work."

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

Lawrence stepped into his office with a sigh of relief. He closed the door behind him, shuffled over to his computer, and slumped into his chair. He reached over and fumbled for the button that would turn the computer on.

"That could have gone worse," he sighed.

The chair, unlike all of the rest on his floor, had a special gap in the back to accommodate his tail. He'd been forced to pay for that singular bit of 'special' comfort out of his own pocket. It seemed more than a little hypocritical for a company that designed implants, prosthetics, orthotics, and other technological advancements to make normal living comfortable -- or, in some cases, possible at all -- to make him pay for that. But right now the fact that it existed, that something in this office was willing to allow for who he was, was a warm comfort.

He pulled a little plastic tab out of his pocket and plugged it into a port on his computer. The computer, recognizing it as an authentication key, booted up his email program so he could get into it. The computer also recognized the software subtly hidden in the key and brought up a bare-bones, anonymous email program.

Lawrence quickly composed a message to his contact at NUBio who'd gotten his dad into the drug trial.

'Let's get together after school so we can go over notes for class,' he typed out. After a moment's thought, he added 'But we can't stay out too late, because my dad will kill me.' and sent it. The first part, admittedly, wasn't too terribly clever or secretive: expressing a desire to meet. The second part, though, communicated that this was important, and had to be soon.

He then quickly threw together an email in the proper email program asking a buddy of his about tickets to an upcoming concert where an anthro-metal band called "Off the Pink" was headlining. He didn't think anyone in security would actually notice that he'd connected to the company's network and then did nothing visible on it for several minutes -- the negligible amount of bandwidth used could be chalked up to any number of desktop widgets -- but the paranoia was getting to him. Thus, a pointless email on a pointless subject.

And then he remembered he had a promise to keep. So he dashed off a quick email to HR. For the 'employee references' file they were supposed to disavow if asked, he shared basic contact info and a list of skills for Liz, making sure she'd get some consideration and hopefully a message the next time they were was a run of hirings. He closed down the email.

Lawrence reached over and grabbed a bulky, clear plastic visor off his desk and plugged it into the interface port on the back of his head. He pulled it down over his eyes and swung around to face the empty space in the middle of his office. An image of his current project hovered in mid-air: A car seat cover with built in sensors and ports to better open up normal vehicle usage to drivers with limited mobility. The technology traditionally required installing a special seat altogether, but he was finding ways to compress basic functions to a cheaper, transferrable cushion.

Lawrence considered himself lucky that the best part of his job was the actual job part of it.

* * *

After an hour of working, Lawrence checked his email account's spam filter. A coded message sitting in the box suggested his secret email account had gotten a reply. He cleared the spam filter and brought up the anonymous account using the portable drive.

'Meet me out by the bus stop after school,' the response simply said.

He sighed with relief, picked up his phone, and dialed Melody. She picked up just as it was about to go to voice mail.

"Hey, it's me," Lawrence said when she picked up.

"Any news?"

"I just got in touch with the guy. After I get off work I'm gonna go over and talk to him."

"Is that safe?"

"Safe enough. We'll be meeting in the building where his office is, in a public place. Ostensibly, we're colleagues and are supposed to be friendly even if our companies are rivals."

"When's it gonna be?" Melody asked.

"Right after I get off work... so I'd leave here a little after 5, probably get there about 6-ish between traffic and parking."

"I'm coming along."

"Don't you have to work?"

"I'll cut out early," she quickly said.

Lawrence frowned. "Are you sure? You were pretty worried about this whole thing messing up your job before."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Melody sighed. "I've been careful enough I can afford to cut out early if I give them some warning. Want me to meet you there?"

"Please do. I'd rather not leave my motorcycle stranded someplace again, and I'm pretty sure it would be out of the way for you to pick me up anyways. I'll text you the address." His phone started beeping. "One second."

He glanced at the screen, paled under his fur, and put it back to his head.

"Hey, Mel, I gotta go."

He hung up without waiting for a response, and he switched to the app on his phone that monitored his dad's vitals via a tracker he wore on his wrist. His father was having a panic attack of some sort -- not his first, certainly not his last, but from the hard numbers the worst he'd had in a month or so.

Lawrence dialed his dad's phone. It rang. It rang. It went to voice mail. He hung up and tried again. Ringing and voice mail.

"Fuck!" he snarled, trying very hard not to throw his phone. But rather than risk breaking it, he set it on his desk and stood up. With a thought, he synced the visor he wore with the office phone network and called his boss.

"Yes, Lawrence?"

"Mr. Grant, I have to head home. My father's having a panic attack and I need to check on him."

"You can call him, right?"

"He's not picking up."

"Then call an ambulance, if it's really that bad!"

"Sir, I think it would be better if--"

"Two days, Lawrence. Two days. Eight calls. No, no, you stay here." Lawrence's boss bit off a remark and took a breath before continuing, calmer. "Call an ambulance. If he winds up in the hospital, I'll do what I can."

Lawrence paused for a moment, biting back any number of invectives and curses.

"Thank you for your time, sir," he muttered through clenched teeth, and hung up.

He let out an inarticulate, wordless, growling exclamation of rage and frustration. He reached for his phone and in his haste bumped it and sent it skittering off the far side of the desk, where he'd have to get down on all fours to retrieve it.

"FUCK!" he snarled, grabbing something else off his desk and throwing it across the room without looking at what it was. He slumped into the chair. "Fuck."

He closed his eyes and thought quickly. He paired the visor with his phone, dug through his contacts, and called Dana.

"Dana, it's my dad, something's wrong," he said as soon as she picked up. He could hear a lot of noise and talking in the background.

"Hold on just one second, Lawrence," she said, obviously covering the microphone and moving someplace a little quieter.

As he waited for her to get back, Lawrence uneasily wondered if he was being scheduled for another chat with HR, since he was sure at least one of the various microphones and cameras around the office picked up his outburst. Officially, they didn't bother recording and analyzing words spoken in the office, though 'emotional content' was often monitored. That was all he needed. Like most companies, RothPharm contracted another firm to handle HR. That level of separation, combined with the firm's practice of regularly rotating its "talkers," made it harder for employees to 'subvert' (i.e., make friends with) the people who do reprimands, promotions, and so forth.

"So what is it?" Dana asked without preamble once she was somewhere a little quieter.

"I'm about 90% sure he's having a panic attack. He gets them, but it's been a while since it's been this bad."

"And you're worried calling an ambulance will cause trouble with the drug trial."

"Basically. And if I cut out of work to go over there, I honestly don't think they'll let me come back and neither of us can afford me getting fired."

He heard the mouse sigh over the phone.

"He's probably not in serious danger," Lawrence continued. "But I can't just leave him alone right now, and things are definitely way too up in the air for me to burn any bridges getting to him."

"What if I bring him here?" Dana asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm working at the clinic today. I don't think I can take the time off to go take care of him, but I could get him, calm him down, and bring him back here. If you think he could handle that."

"Christ, Dana, I..." Lawrence thought for a moment. "He... could probably handle that, I think. And then I can be by after-- shit!"

"What?"

"I have an... appointment after work," Lawerence said, choosing his words carefully as he was on the company line, on company hardware. Officially they couldn't listen in, but he was too smart to take that at face value. "Important. Life and death."

He figured anyone monitoring would write that last comment off as hyperbole, but Dana would get it.

"Well, it's not like the clinic closes. If it doesn't take too long, he'll still be here. Worst-case scenario, I call him a cab home."

"You're a life-saver, Dana."

"That is literally my job," she said drily. "You owe me big for this."

"I absolutely do. Okay, when you get there, there's an injector in the drawer next to the fridge. It'll calm him down if he needs it, and it's approved to work with the meds they've got him on. He's just no good at using it when he's like this, like, in the moment."

"I know how this works. Remember, your dad's not the only Reversion sufferer I've seen."

"You're right, you're right, I just..." Lawrence reached up to run his fingers through his headfur, stopped because of the visor in the way, and just put his hand on his desk.

"He'll be fine. Let me handle this and just get over here when you can."

Lawrence sat down. "Thanks," he said, his voice so small he wasn't sure he'd even said anything out loud.

She hung up. He took off the visor, set it on the desk, and sat down himself. He slumped in the chair, tears of pure stress and fear soaking his cheekfur. For a moment he was glad that none of his co-workers would be sensitive enough to pick up on it.

The moment passed. He took a deep breath and got to work.

* * *

The sun was low in the sky as Lawrence stepped off his motorcycle and walked down the sidewalk towards the Ashpool Tower, where NUBio kept their offices and labs. They effectively owned the building, but they also knew that just slapping the company name down the side in big light-up letters is the sort of thing just begging for unflattering comparisons to dystopian movies.

Melody waited by the door. She wore a cream blouse and a green skirt, very 'business casual' and carrying a purse under one arm, and Lawrence wondered just how early she'd cut out of work to keep from looking like she'd spent all day in an airport food court. Lawrence was still dressed in his white button-down work shirt and khakis underneath his motorcycle jacket, though he'd kicked off the shoes he had to wear at the office -- like a lot of furs, he preferred to go bare-pawed when possible.

"Somebody's dressed up for this," he said, smiling to try and cover up his nervousness.

"Espionage feels like a special occasion," she said with a cheery smile.

Maybe it was because it had been so long between their relationship and their recent reconnection, but he couldn't tell just what was behind that smile. He recognized the twitch of her tail as anxiety, but that could mean a million things. He was afraid of what she'd say if he pressed the issue, so he just opened the door and waved her in.

The cool A/C of the lobby briefly ruffled their fur as they crossed the threshold between air pressures. Faux-marble floors and sterile walls reflected unflattering light from the ceiling. Security guards remained perched at a bank of elevators that went up, while the elevators that went to the parking garage appeared unmonitored aside from the usual security cameras. Lawrence had decided to park a few blocks away for good measure. He gestured to a small cafe off to the side, mostly uninhabited aside from a human man, two human women, and a cheetah morph. People passed back and forth between the banks of elevators or between the elevators and doors, not paying attention to anyone else sharing this liminal space.

The human man sat alone at one table, a tablet folded up next to him. He was light-skinned with brown hair styled and sprayed almost into a solid mass, the better to resist the occasional wind. Lawrence was reasonably sure his hair would repel stains, too. The fox pulled a tablet from an inside pocket in the jacket, curved to wrap around his side. He gripped an end in each hand and with a single yank pulled it straight and sat down across from the guy.

"Hey, Tyler, fancy meeting you here," Lawrence said with a forced smile. "Have time to go over some specs?"

That was a code they'd established for 'This is going to be a friendly meeting, and I'm reasonably sure I haven't been followed.'

"I swear, RothPharm needs to pay me consulting fees if you're going to keep on me like this," Tyler said.

This was code for 'As far as I know, everything's fine.'

"Not used to guests, though," he continued, shooting a glance at Melody as she sat down. Her ears flattened with annoyance.

This wasn't really code. It was the first time either of them had brought a third party to one of these meetings.

"This is an associate of mine; she's shadowing me for a while."

Tyler leaned in, fresh out of joviality.

"Okay, Lawrence, cut the crap, what's going on?" He slid his tablet over and made a show of bringing something up on the screen related to the conversation they were pretending to have.

"Someone's after me because of the deal we made."

"Hey, I didn't tell anyone about the trial."

"Not the trial. What I traded you. Though that said, following up on the trial, I stumbled onto a few things about the drugs in the trial I probably shouldn't have, and I'm woried somebody wants to keep me quiet."

"Hey, no refunds."

"Not asking for one. But I've had people come at me twice. I wanted to see if you knew anything and/or warn you."

"Wait. People have come after you?"

"Someone at a company called Shaw Design Consulting noticed that I traded those plans to you, and also that I've met with Dr. Charles Landau. Name ring a bell?"

"Vaguely."

"Well, I was in the middle of a conversation with him just the other night and a full-blown kill-team kicked in the door and came after me."

"Holy shit. Are you okay? Is he okay?"

"I'm well enough. I don't know if he's okay; I had a bot run a search while I was at work and he's dropped off the radar."

"And you're sure it's something major because..."

"He's an old man now, Tyler. And he took a hit from a stray bullet, which means he didn't just shrug it off. The shooting didn't make the news. There's no sign of him in any local hospitals, which means he's being hidden by someone. But Shaw got him to consult on something they were doing for NUBio."

Tyler blinked. "You're serious."

"As serious as a mercenary with dermal armor and a beanbag gun."

Tyler subconsciously pushed his seat a couple of inches back.

"What, do you know something?" Melody asked.

"I don't know what I know. But the dermal armor and beanbag gun... it sounds familiar." Tyler suddenly glanced around like he was afraid of being watched.

Lawrence, too tense for subtlety, looked around. The two human women talking together didn't seem to be a threat. But then there was the oddly-muscular cheetah morph in a suit sitting alone, an expensive visor over his eyes as he talked and looked around the table. Lawrence had to guess that he was seeing his conversation partners at the different seats around his table as he subvocalized what he was saying. The fox swiveled an ear to try and get a better idea of that conversation, just in case, but the acoustics weren't right.

"Do you know who that guy is?" Lawrence asked Tyler quietly.

"I think he's a new security hire in the building."

"How new?"

"Few months, I think?"

Lawrence frowned. Something wasn't right about this, but he wasn't sure what. Intellectually he knew he had no instinct for espionage, tradecraft, or any other fancy words for spy shit. But he knew when his gut told him there was a problem.

He got up and fished a pen out of his pocket. Tyler just looked at him, then at the cheetah, and back, but remained quiet. Lawrence couldn't tell if it was fear in his eyes or just trusting the fox's call. Melody grabbed his arm.

"What are you doing?" she quietly hissed.

"Testing a theory," he muttered, gently pulling his arm away, and approaching the cheetah. "Excuse me, sir?"

The cheetah flicked an ear but didn't turn away from his conversation. Lawrence reached out and grabbed his shoulder.

It was like gripping a leather-padded statue -- this cheetah had definitely been enhanced, his muscles firm, his skin thick. Weirdly thick, but that on its own didn't confirm his theory.

"One second, boss," the cheetah muttered into the mic before turning around to snarl at Lawrence. "What?" he snapped.

"Do you have a charger I can borrow for my pen?" he asked, holding it up. "I'm doing a thing and it's died on me."

The cheetah's jaw clenched and he dug through his pockets. As he rummaged for the charger, Lawrence glanced at the visor and wondered if, if this was all a decoy, someone could see him. If there was an actual conversation with a boss going on that he'd interrupted. The cheetah produced a bulky cap designed to fit over the ends of most standard sizes of digital pen. He held it out to Lawrence.

The fox reached out and grabbed the cheetah's hand. He ran his fingers over the fur there. The fur was thick, and had a familiar artificial, almost plastic-y texture. The cheetah frowned at him, a look in his eye trying to wordlessly challenge the fox to back off.

"You!" Lawrence hissed instead. He turned to Melody and Tyler. "It's him! Run!" he shouted before he took off running.

"Fuck's sake," the 'cheetah' snarled as he grabbed Lawrence's arm. He then muttered something else but Lawrence didn't process it at the time.

The fox took his pen and jabbed it right into the mercenary's wrist, and only after he spent a few moments really grinding the tip in did he get the larger man to relax his grip to get free. His arm throbbed where the panther squeezed it as he ran, and he grabbed a chair to throw behind him. The enhanced morph easily leapt over the chair.

Two shots rang out and Lawrence's gaze immediately snapped from looking for the nearest exit to see Melody, her masked eyes narrowed, taking cover behind the table and holding the gun he'd acquired from Dr. Landau the night this all started. The two shots hit and slowed down the mercenary, and she fired another two. It didn't seem to hurt him, but he did stagger back. His fur rippled, black waves running through it before it reasserted its previous coloring.

Okay, that's new, the fox thought. It felt like his pounding heartbeat was loud enough to drown out the thought.

The women at the other table screamed and rushed for a fire door, and the handful of other people passing through the building followed suit. The security guards hit an alarm and drew tasers. Tyler ran for the exit, and as soon as Lawrence got his feet under him to follow Melody lowered the gun and took off in that direction as well. The fox reached out to grab his tablet off the table and jammed it back under his jacket.

"Where did...?" Lawrence asked Melody as they reached the door together.

"You left it at Tom's. Don't let him get away," she said, gesturing to Tyler ahead of them with the gun, her purse clutched under her arm with the other.

Tyler ducked between two buildings, dashing through an area with tables and benches bolted to the ground. The earliest shades of evening decorated the sky, the setting sun on their backs as they dodged around the tables. Lawrence couldn't tell if Tyler was just trying to put distance between himself and the scene, or if he was trying to keep away from the morphs following him.

Tyler scrambled down a flight of stairs at the end of the plaza, coming down to a sidewalk and a street below. Lawrence, who'd pulled ahead of Melody, glanced back and didn't see any sign of the assassin or mercenary or whatever on their respective tails. Both he and Melody quickly followed down the stairs, where they found Tyler leaning against a wall underneath the steps and catching his breath. Melody stopped halfway down and watched the top, with the gun in one hand and something tucked under her other arm.

"What... what was that?" he gasped out.

"Guy with the beanbag gun and dermal armor I was talking about," Lawrence said. His heartbeat sent blood pounding through his pointed ears, and he was having trouble focusing to figure out what it was the panther had said.

"And that's been... at my company? For a few months?" the human panted, eyes watery with fear as he closed them. "Why?"

"I don't know. But you might wanna call off sick for a couple of days," Lawrence said.

"What could... what could I know that started all this?"

"Shaw had an interest in those plans that I traded you, that's all I know. And something connected to Landau, something about..." Lawrence trailed off, and realized he didn't want to scare Tyler so much he'd vanish. He shook his head. "I dunno."

"Man, I gotta..." Tyler loosened his tie. "I gotta go."

"Wait, before you go," Lawrence said. Mentioning Landau had knocked something loose. "When I talked to Landau before, he mentioned someone named 'Reginald.' Do you know who that is?"

Reginald should still be in there, he'll get you in, an old man had wheezed to Lawrence what felt like five years ago.

"I'm sorry, I don't," Tyler said, reaching for his phone. Without looking, he jabbed at the screen with his thumb. "But I need to get the hell away from y-- here."

Lawrence quietly appreciated Tyler's save as the man took off running down the sidewalk, probably calling up an autocab.

"That was a bust," Lawrence sighed, closing his eyes.

I'm not even here for this.

That's what he'd said. The panther, back in the cafe. It just clicked. 'I'm not even here for this.' So wait... was it a coincidence that he happened to be there? Did he actually work for NUBio after all?

Lawrence opened his eyes to see Melody holding something over the side of the steps right in front of his face. A tablet.

"Not a total bust. Tyler left this."

The fox blinked and reached up to take it from her. "Holy shit, Mel, this is... how?"

"Good with my hands," she said, smirking at an old joke. She tucked the gun back into her purse. "If that asshole was coming after us, he'd be down here by now."

"I don't think he was following us, or Tyler," he said. "I'll explain when we get there, but we need to get somewhere safe so I can dig around this tablet."

"Is that going to have the files you need?"

"No, but Tyler's probably got a login stored there, and given the state he's in he won't think to clear it out right away. I can use that to backdoor into NUBio's system for, probably, the next couple of hours." Lawrence grinned and tucked the tablet into his jacket, alongside his own. "You're amazing, Mel."

"It's been a while since I've heard that while your pants were on," she said drily, sending Lawrence's ears flattening back against his head. "So where are we going that's safe?"

* * *

Lawrence tried very hard not to just rush into the busy clinic in a panic. He trusted Dana, knew she'd keep his dad safe, knew that if something went wrong he'd know about it by now. He did walk in with swift strides such that Melody had to rush to keep up.

The Swann Clinic smelled of cheap disinfectant slightly overpowering a NoseBlank knockoff -- maybe even a homebrewed one. The place wasn't exactly sterile, but it was clean enough. The waiting room was a series of plastic chairs and padded benches (it would have been charitable to call them couches), half of which didn't match. A handful of tables scattered around the room, each with magazines and cheap paperbacks, separated various clusters of chairs and benches. TVs hung from the corners, playing news stations in various languages.

Lawrence could tell by his nose, even with the assorted chemicals in the air, that this place was mostly utilized by morphs. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a small family of humans in one corner, and a handful of scattered morphs of different species on the benches and chairs in various states of listlessness.

He went up to a counter protected by a wire safety mesh. A slim calico cat morph in a nurse's uniform sat at the counter next to a computer and printer that had seen better days. Melody quietly came up behind him, knowing not to interrupt him in his current mindset.

"Is Dana Simmons here?" he asked the cat behind the counter.

"And you are?" she responded, looking wary.

"Lawrence Murphy. She'll know what this is about."

The nurse behind the counter gave him a wary look and gestured to an empty spot in the room and picked up a phone. Lawrence hesitated, but she just stared at him until Melody grabbed his shoulder and steered him away from the counter. He swiveled an ear as she dragged him to a bench, and she lightly smacked his arm.

"What was that for?" he hissed, ears laying back.

"Stop listening in. It's Dana. She'll be out here in a minute. Just take a deep breath. See what you can find on Tyler's tablet in the meantime."

Lawrence nodded. "Hold this." He handed Tyler's tablet to Mel, then pulled out his own. He tapped at the screen, fingerpads bringing up a precautionary software suite that Tom had installed on the tablet once upon a time. Lawrence wished they had time to give Tyler's tablet over to Tom or even Steve, but his father was the highest priority. Maybe, if he got lucky...

He cut off the self-distraction and synced his tablet to Tyler's. Mel watched on the screen as the screen lit up and she saw icons flash and move around on the screen while Lawrence copied data over to his tablet -- he didn't trust Tyler's equipment enough to use it if he could avoid it, but he was willing to run a copy of it in a shell on his own system. He set his system to do a quick sweep of the stolen tablet's various network connections, when he saw a familiar mouse come in from a nearby hallway.

Dana waved to Lawrence and Melody and gestured for them to follow. Lawrence took the tablets, tucked them into the jacket pocket to keep them out of the way, and ignored the weight on his side as he followed her. The clinic obviously operated out of a remodeled low-rent office building, from the design of the hallways and doors, and Dana led them into a room.

Lawrence's dad sat on an old hospital bed, legs hanging over the edge, with his shirt half-open. His ears perked, slowly, when he saw Lawrence and Melody come in behind the nurse. There was only the briefest moment of confusion when the older fox's eyes lingered on Mel, but he seemed to catch up quickly enough.

"Oh my goodness, Melody, it's been..." Dale began.

"Years," she said, stepping up to give him a slightly-awkward hug. "How have you been, Dale?"

He just shrugged and gestured to the room with a mildly-exasperated gasp, like he wanted to make a case that he didn't need this much attention.

"I've been alright," he said after a moment of looking for the words. "Just... just old."

"You had a panic attack, Mr. Murphy," Dana said, taking his wrist and getting his pulse. "Whether or not you think he needs to be, Lawrence is worried."

"He's worried? I'm worried," Dale said with a frown, addressing Dana as if the others weren't in the room. "He vanishes on a business trip without warning, he comes back, all of a sudden he's talking to his ex-girlfriend and she's yelling at him over something on the phone and there's a weird smell on him I feel like I should recognize but I don't, like a burning smell."

Lawrence laid his ears back and Melody awkwardly looked away.

"He never tells me when something's wrong," the older fox continued. "So of course I worry."

Lawrence sighed, biting back a comment he knew would start an argument. Dana gave him a questioning look.

"Anyhow, your pulse is fine now, and your vitals seem to be good," Dana said. "You responded well to the injector, so unless there's anything you want to work out you can head out whenever you like." She shot Lawrence a look as if asking him if he was ready to go home yet.

"Okay, dad, let's have a talk," Lawrence said as he pulled a chair over and sat down. "There has been something going on, and if you want to know, I'll tell you."

"I just don't want you to treat me like I'm fragile, or an... an idiot or anything."

"I'm not going to get into every detail, but I've been looking into stuff about your condition, where it came from, and I found a few things that concerned me. I was looking into the folks doing your drug trial, and... and I think I pissed someone off."

"Is someone after you?"

"Maybe. I don't know exactly who. And I don't know exactly why. I really don't." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the tablets. "They wouldn't let me come home when you had your attack, and I had to meet with a guy who had information for me, and... it's someone who was in danger. So I made a decision I'm not proud of, to have Dana bring you here." He held up the tablets. "I needed the information on these."

"What's on there?"

"I haven't had a chance to fully go through it yet, but through these I can get into a system that might have useful information." He turned to Dana. "Speaking of which, I hate to ask, do you know how secure your network is here?"

Dana snorted. "We're a borderline-guerilla street clinic getting by on scraps and shady financial sources. Which means that we're either using the coffee shop next door for wireless or we've got some stuff shielding us that I probably shouldn't talk about even if I knew enough to do so."

"There is no coffee shop next door," Lawrence commented.

Dana grinned.

"Oh! That also reminds me," the fox said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a thumb drive. "I dug through all of my notes and stuff and put this together. It's everything I have on the..." He hesitated, and tried not to glance at his father. "...well, the stuff we were talking about. Including some early analysis I had done."

Dana acknowledged his artful pause with a knowing look and a nod, and took the thumb drive. "Thanks, maybe this will help." She looked at the three of them. "If you guys want to hang out here for a little bit, you can. I won't kick you out, but try not to linger too long, we'll probably need this room at some point."

"Thanks," Lawrence said. He turned to Dale. "Dad, do you mind if we stay here a little longer? So I can look this up? Then Melody and I will get you home."

"Sure, just let me go use the bathroom and then grab a drink," he said as he buttoned up his shirt and stepped out of the room.

"You know, I could run him home so you can do this. I figure I'm driving him home anyways because I have a car and you have the bike," Melody said once he was out of the room.

"No, no. Well, I mean, you should drive him, and I'm taking the bike home, but not right this minute. I don't want to let him out of my sight between here and there if I can help it. This shouldn't take too long."

Lawrence found a chair and sat down. He set Tyler's tablet on a table next to the bed and focused on his own. Melody, frowning, dragged a chair over from the other side of the bed. Lawrence set up a proper network security environment for his tablet and used the login credentials he'd copied from Tyler's tablet to get into NUBio's mainframe. Once he got in, he immediately began running a search for anything involving the name 'Reginald' and the phrase 'Breakdown Disposition,' as Landau suggested. He wasn't expecting to find anything on the Reversion in a file that Tyler could access, but it couldn't hurt.

"You remind me of your mom, a little bit," Dale said before taking a sip of vending machine coffee. Lawrence blinked; he'd missed him coming in.

"Is that a good thing?"

He shrugged. "Your mom and I... she did a lot of activist stuff she didn't want to talk about. She said it would put me in danger. Our priorities were... they were different. But she believed in what she was doing, even if we didn't always agree about how to do it."

"Whatever happened to her?" Melody asked, her voice quiet. "Tom and I were just kids, and I don't know if we ever got the full story. It was like she was there, and then she wasn't. All we knew is that she wasn't dead."

Both Dale and Lawrence spoke up to answer at once, tried to talk over each other, and stopped. They both paused to let the other go first, dancing around it as each one tried to say something just as the other started to speak.

"You know it better than I do," Lawrence sighed.

"Sophie, my wife... after the Plague, after we Converted, and Larry -- excuse, me, Lawrence -- was born... she was a lawyer, but she got more into activist stuff, and that got her into hacking. It got to the point where she was out of the house four, maybe five nights a week. I don't know what she was doing. But I thought that maybe she should have stayed home more to be with me and our son." His voice was tinged with equal parts regret and acceptance, like he'd forgiven himself for some of this but not all of it. "Whoever was right, she needed more support than I was ready to give. So... she left." He shrugged, as if to punctuate the sentence.

Lawrence looked back down at the tablet. The search continued, but a name had come up: Reginald Robins. The search's results within the company directory, internal memos, and the like suggested that he'd worked as a consultant on Shaw's projects in addition to a few other things. Weirdly enough, though, there weren't any pictures of him.

"Are my pills safe?" Dale asked as Lawrence tried to find more information on Reginald.

"What?" The fox looked up at his father, ears laying back.

"You mentioned the drug trial. Are my pills safe?"

"They're perfectly safe, I swear it. In fact, they're almost a little too good. That's what got me looking up all this."

"I don't like the idea of you being in trouble because of me," Dale said, his voice very quiet.

Lawrence offered his father a reassuring smile. "Yeah, but if I find what I think I'm going to find, it's going to help a lot of people."

"So what do you think you found?" Lawrence's father leaned in to look at the screen.

"Well, there's a guy named Reginald at NUBio, who might know a lot more about your condition and might be willing to help me. There's not a lot of contact info, but there's a phone number and from there I think Tom and I could track him down."

Lawrence started copying files onto his tablet.

"Does that mean we can go?" Dale asked.

"Yeah, I think it means we can go," the younger fox said, giving both his father and his ex-girlfriend a confident smile.

* * *

"This is weird," Melody said as she and Lawrence ducked into the hallway.

The fox silently agreed as he and Mel walked quietly through bright, sterile, hospital hallways. The scent-neutralizer was more expensive, and more subtle. Autonomous cleaning drones zipped around at floor level, sterilizing the floor and picking up stray fur and dander. Lawrence tried not to think about whether or not they were deliberately following them for being among the very few morphs they'd seen in the building.

After dropping Dale off at home and consulting with Tom, a brief-but-boring trace on Reginald Robins' phone led to an upscale hospital across town. An actual hospital with ambulances and investors and a board of directors, not a street-clinic with a van driven by a guy named Travis and a democracy of whatever doctors were on-duty. It seemed like a weird coincidence, but a followup call confirmed that Reginald was a patient in the executive wing.

The PA system shrieked out a computer-generated warning about someone's car about to be towed. Both Lawrence and Melody winced (him more than her), the electronic voice carrying an uncomfortable buzz that set off their morph hearing. Lawrence opened his mouth to comment on it, when he noticed the nurse's station down the way and pointed it out.

The nurse behind the counter was human, her uniform relatively fresh -- at least, it didn't have any fluids on it the fox could see or smell -- and her eyes attentive either due to proper sleep or proper stimulants. She took in the pair of morphs, and her fingers moved closer to the intercom's unlabeled panic button just in case.

"Name?" she asked.

"Reginald Robins?" the fox asked.

"Family?" the nurse asked, an eyebrow raised.

"I'm from his company, just checking in." He adjusted his grip on his shoulder satchel and held up his phone. The screen displayed a digital ID card, hacked together out of the company ID on Tyler's tablet. It had Lawrence's picture, but the rest -- including a scannable bar code that would be valid for about another half-hour or so -- could all pass for valid NUBio identification. "We need a status update."

The nurse picked up a pen, clicked a button on the back, and a laser came out to scan the ID. She glanced at a screen Lawrence couldn't see and nodded.

"Of course, Mr. Garcia, let me put together a printout--" she began.

"I'm sorry, I have to check on him in person," the fox said with an apologetic smile. "The company insists."

"My buck is passed," the nurse said with a shrug as she turned the pen around, handed it to Lawrence, and gestured to a screen set into the desktop. Lawrence signed a visitor log as a printer under the desk whirred. She handed him a rolled-up sheet of paper-thin, easily recyclable plastic, and got up. "Let me show you there."

She took them to the doorway and unlocked it with a gesture, and Lawrence and Mel into the doorway.

Laying on the bed, with machines hooked up to him and all manner of breathing tubes, was Dr. Charles Landau.

"Do you need more than this?" she asked.

Lawrence paused for a moment, trying to think of something to ask that wouldn't give him away, when the PA suddenly called her back to the desk for a phone call.

"You'll be fine here," she said, as if to convince herself more than anything else, before leaving them alone with the room.

Lawrence quickly ducked in, waved the raccoon inside, and closed the door behind them.

"Dr. Landau?" the fox asked.

He was unresponsive. Lawrence looked at the machines and realized he didn't know what they did other than this one obviously charted brain activity and this one obviously monitored other vitals. He unrolled the printout he'd been given, the thin plastic feeling like a sheet of vinyl under his fingers. The 'Reginald Robins' name was on everything.

"This says they've got him in some sort of medical coma, but it doesn't strictly say why..." Lawrence muttered to himself.

Melody stepped up and lifted up the sheets and looked beneath. "Well, here's what's left of the bullet wound you described. It's closed up, looks like a bio-suture. Either there's a lot of internal damage he's recovering from, or this is an opportunity to keep him out of the way until..."

"...until I'm out of the way," the fox commented. "In which case, this could be a trap."

"If it was a trap, then why would Dr. Landau set it for you the way he did? If he wanted the company to get rid of you, he could have steered you into the hit squad that attacked you." Melody put back the hospital gown and sheet. "Or, hell, shot you himself."

"You're right. He thought that finding 'Reginald' was going to help me. Maybe he meant something else, but... I mean, we're here. He's here. I think we're safe for the moment." Even still, Lawrence edged closer to the door and carefully locked it.

"Yeah, but what do we do with that?" the raccoon asked.

Lawrence stepped in and took a closer look at the sensors and wires plugged into him. He ran his fingertips along them, tracing them back to various machines, and made note of those he recognized.

"Simple, we talk to him," the fox said with a grin, his tail wagging.

"This is the part where I'm supposed to ask what that means just so you can explain it, isn't it?" Melody asked, frowning.

Lawrence grabbed a chair and pulled it over next to the bed. The expensive chair and expensive floor made almost no sound as one slid over the other. He sat down next to the bed and opened up his satchel to remove and unfold the visor he'd picked up at the airport.

"Oh God, that thing," Mel sighed.

"They've got him plugged into what we in the industry call a 'hamster wheel.' It keeps a comatose brain stimulated." Lawrence fished out some cords and gestured to a white plastic unit on the table next to the bed with wires sticking out of it. He leaned over to look at the unmarked device, and then produced from his bag a bunch of wires a small box about the size of a deck of cards. He used wires to connect the visor to the box, and from the box to the 'hamster wheel' unit. "It keeps his brain in a virtual environment, and if you have the right equipment you can visit someone in it."

"That sounds dangerous to have. Couldn't someone hack that? And yes, I'm aware of the context in which I ask that."

"They run on their own network that's air-gapped. There's only one way this can be hacked, and I'm sitting in the chair to do it." Lawrence plugged the visor into the jack on his head and slid it down over his eyes. "Now keep an eye out. I'm going in."

"You've always wanted to say that, didn't you?"

"It's almost like you know me!" Lawrence said, amused and unwilling to let Melody kill this moment for him. He hit a button on the device and connected his brain to the box and, through that, to the unit hooked up to Dr. Landau's mind.

It didn't load up the virtual environment right away. He saw just a plain all-text interface as everything booted up. The actual unit, a Reeves Stimulator Mk IV (Wait, Lawrence thought, is the IV even out of testing yet? This hospital must be loaded_._), asked for his access credentials. Normally this is the part where someone from the hospital would be manually logging him in, or plugging a key into one of the ports on the device to give him access.

Lawrence made do with the suite of basic hacking tools in his deck, artisanally crafted out of the actual OS source code available to him through his job. Turns out the hospital was still running off the default passwords. But that got him into the system, and he felt the tingling in his head as the visor started loading up whatever environment had been programmed for the good doctor.

"Okay, I'm loading in," he said out loud. "I can hear you if you talk, just know that I might cut you off if I'm having trouble focusing. Sorry about that. I'm not wired for full immersion so you're going to be getting my half of conversations."

The room first appeared as a selection of gray boxes that changed shape and developed colors. The effect was oddly-reminiscent of Lawrence's eyes adjusting to a drastic change in room lighting. Which, in a sense, it was. Walls became bookshelves, and a fireplace appeared against one wall. Blocks in the room sharpened and morphed into armchairs and tables, the room meant to roughly approximate Dr. Landau's living room. A floating screen appeared against one wall, where a news channel played with the sound off. What started as a digital 'fuzz' became Dr. Landau in a smoking jacket sitting in one of the chairs, reading a book.

Lawrence didn't have the equipment or the implants for the full sensory experience, but he definitely got enough. He could feel the heat off the fireplace, smell the burning wood. He even got a few whiffs of a glass of brandy on the table. What was weird was that he couldn't smell Dr. Landau himself. On some level, he could smell the old man in the bed next to him, but no human scent came from the environment itself. But then, most of the people using these would likely be humans rather than morphs, and would never notice.

"Dr. Landau?" he asked, his voice echoing strangely in the virtual space.

The old man in the chair looked up. His eyes widened with surprise, and he looked around like he expected to see someone else there with him. Lawrence approached, his physical movements in the simulation resulting from his brain sending commands like 'forward' and 'raise your arm' rather than any sort of direct connection.

"Mr. Murphy, is that you?" he asked, setting the book aside and sitting up.

"Yeah, I traced 'Reginald' and that led me... here." Lawrence's nose twitched as the scent of the glass of brandy increased as he approached. "You were hoping I'd find you here, weren't you?"

"Not exactly, but it's an outcome I'll accept..." Dr. Landau glanced off to the side like he was keeping an eye on something. Lawrence reflexively turned to look.

A morph stood there, dressed identically to Dr. Landau. Its fur was burnt orange, its whiskered muzzle in some sort of weird liminal state between a canine and a feline shape. The ears were vague as well, pointy but not too tall. Lawrence's first impression is that this was some artist's idea of a 'generic' animal morph.

"Welcome to Dr. Landau's virtual space," the figure said, the voice vaguely male. "I hope it's as cozy as he keeps telling me it is. I lack a frame of reference."

"Hold on," the fox said to the older man. "Let me get this software guide out of the way."

He 'thought' a command at the environment to bring up the menu, and 'clicked' on the settings options to stop the software guide from acknowledging him. It just continued to look at him, when it shouldn't see him and in fact should have turned transparent to indicate it wouldn't see him.

"Lawrence--" Dr. Landau began.

"No, look, I don't want whatever this thing is listening in and reporting back to NUBio what we're saying," the fox said with a frown.

He tried to send a command to dismiss it. Nothing. He brought up one of his hacking tools and tricked the software into upgrading him to admin access, giving him full control over the simulation. He tried to dismiss the guide again. Nothing.

He reached out and tapped the shoulder of the strange figure, using that 'physical' contact as an anchor to send another fruitless dismissal command. It reached up and smacked his hand off its shoulder.

"What the hell?" Lawrence asked. "That shouldn't happen."

"What is it?" he heard Melody say.

"Lawrence, stop it," the figure said, looking him right in the eye. "I'm not a software guide. I'm here. I was talking to Dr. Landau and I was hoping to get to talk to you now that you're here."

"Wait, are you another user? How?"

"Lawrence," it said with a sigh. "Calm down and listen for a minute, because I can only keep the nurses distracted from the room you're in for so long."

Lawrence's eyes widened. "Wait, what?"

"What's going on?" he heard Melody say back in the real world, sounding worried.

"I'm not a software agent, I'm not listening in for the hospital or NUBio or anyone like that. My name is Chimera. And I am the world's first -- and so far only -- artificial digital consciousness." It smiled. "It's a genuine pleasure to meet you."