Chapter 348 - Far Future, Ch 58 – Of Cats and Things (1/2)

Serena turned to glance at me, too. She was dark-skinned, dark-haired, high cheekbones, and just radiated an atmosphere of calm. She was also a stunner who spent eight hours a day underdiving for Karma, and dragging My Queen along to get him to Seven.

I clocked a thumb at the critter. ”I'm delivering Lepido here to you.”

”Mew?” she asked, looking at me.

”If you'll jump out of my Null...” I prodded her, and she jumped gracefully down to his desk, making him pull his hands back as the butterfly-pattern wings flared out for an instant and she landed.

”An Aquatainian Fluttercat, which is not a cat, but people are stupid.” she had antennae, for starters, and the wings were not some cosmetic decoration gene-modded into place. She was rather catlike, but with a longer and somewhat thinner neck, longer-limbed and graceful, with very soft white fur and a poofy tail. ”She's about as intelligent as a two-year-old human, although most people don't realize that. She's also very empathic and psensitive.

”I gather she was a fad pet of one of the families at the Black Night event we just had. She came out of nowhere and jumped onto my shoulders to get away from all the violent emotions in the area. She also felt her adopters turned into puppets, but it couldn't do anything about them until everything was all dead.

”She needs to be around people, as she feeds on residual emotional energy, among other things, but those people need to be generally calm or she gets very skittish. You're the calmest normal person I know, so congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a pet which, if the prices on the Boole are to be believed, costs more than two years of your salary.”

His Band bleeped. ”That's an optimal diet, but she can eat dead rats without a problem.”

His pale brown eyes looked at me, then down at the cat standing on his desk looking back at him.

”He good for you?” I asked. The cat looked back at me and mewed again. ”Fantastic. He has problems sleeping, help him with that.”

The cat mewed again, and proceeded to walk up his arm, around his shoulders, and laid down around his neck as My Queen had the closest thing I'd ever seen to surprise on his face.

Yeah, he was more a dog kind of guy, but he was perfect for the cat, so why not?

-Hey girls, My Queen lives in Casperblok. That's on the next wave of expansions, isn't it?- I flicked through the community files they'd drawn up on next goals, having largely taken over all the mechanics thereof.

Confirmations rang in from girls busy flaming oozes, ganking morlocks, trolling spideroids, dodging zwilnik shooters, roaring through deathmatch races, shooting up a drug parlor, and otherwise engaged in peacetime activities.

-Let's make that a priority, shall we?- There was a small blizzard of affirmatives, and I smiled and waved at Doris as I walked out. She smiled and waved back, beaming with her new haircut and manicure.

Joile Rantha had personally promised to perform the surgery to restore her face when she hit Eight, and was Doris' most frequent escort home. The Mick had gotten himself certified as a Medicae Trainer, expanded his operation yet further, and fortified his credentials. He was also overseeing satellite clinics at all the bloks under G&G control, which still took gangers who came in under white flag. The availability of pain-free psionic healing was a huge draw and making good money, and if a bunch of nasty wounds popped up on me in the middle of something and were then healed away, well, that was me monetizing a healing factor.

The girls were getting to the level where they could start developing one, which was good, they were a must in our line of work, and the Regeneration/1 at Five even more vital. Coming back from an insta-kill would really annoy a lot of people...

I headed outside for a walk, looked both ways (and checked TC) before crossing the street.

Uh huh...

There was a Tekron hovering up there in a clear space between the traffic flows, looking at me.

It was out of phase with reality, and so undetectable without some really high-end tech... or True Sight, in which case it was bloody obvious sitting out there so confidently in plain sight.

I made no sign that I'd noticed anything, of course, but Grim still rode high in my hair on the back of my head, watching my flanks, and after five upgrades, had considerable visual range for a psicrystal.

Chalice silently moved into construct-cutting mode, in bodyphase and so unseen.

Okay, it was following me, too. That wasn't too good. I could understand why they would be interested in me, a mere human professing to kill one of their stealthers, and probably wondering how and why, and wanting to verify if it were true.

This pyramidal wonder had a large eye on each facing, and swiveling energy projectors at each vertex. If it popped in and started releasing, I was pretty sure everything within a half-mile was going to die pretty quickly to some very high-end firepower.

But it was here to watch, and it was following me and matching my pace.

So, the thing to do was take it by surprise. I headed for the corner of the commercia building across from the Termite building in the government ward offices, and slowly picked up speed, first by lengthening my strides with lightfoot without actually changing my pace, and then going into skating and moving into the fast travel lane.

It started to swing out as it accelerated to match my pace, picking up speed as it rounded the corner... and paused, because I was not where I should have been.