Chapter 1 #2
The scanner chimed again, and he leaned forward.
There was a faint biomarker in the right range.
It was very faint, but there. He frowned as he looked at it.
It was small enough to be the cat he was looking for.
It was weak, which meant the reading was hours old, maybe more, but it was there, tucked into a corner of the apartment’s thermal profile like the animal had found somewhere warm and stayed there.
He smiled.
The trace wasn’t going to give him an exact location on its own, but it was more than he’d had before. He’d need to widen the sweep and follow the trail. The cat could be in another apartment or some shelter three districts over.
But it was a start, which was more than he’d had before.
Pulling up the wider scan parameters, he set the scanners to map the surrounding blocks. If the cat had been moved, there’d be a trail. And if it was still inside, hiding in the walls or under a floorboard, he’d find that too.
The screen flickered again, and there it was. A faint trace moving away from the apartment building approximately thirty-six hours ago.
He smiled.
“Got you.”
An hour later, Thyaar was in an even worse neighborhood.
He hadn't thought that was even possible. Earth had already set a bar so low it was practically subterranean, and yet here he was, discovering that the bar had a basement, and the basement had a crawlspace, and the crawlspace was full of used needles and something that might have been a dead dog.
He'd had to leave the Vett'an behind. The buildings here were packed so tight that even if he'd wanted to risk the Emperor's paint job, which he definitely did not, there was nowhere to put it down. So he'd left it and walked.
Walking through this district had been an education. One he hadn't really wanted.
He looked up at the buildings in front of him. They were broken down and slouched against each other for support. A couple had boards nailed across their facades with words he had to squint at for a moment before the meaning came to him.
Condemned - For Demolition.
He shook his head. The boards were older than some of the younglings he'd seen on the way here, but it looked like people were living in the buildings they were attached to anyway. Lights flickered behind the cracked windows, and bedraggled laundry hung between fire escapes.
His jaw tightened as he looked around. He'd grown up in the common barracks of a frontier estate, so he knew what hardship looked like. But this wasn't hardship… this was something else.
The scanner trace had led him to a building that looked like it was a sneeze away from collapsing. It was five stories of grimy brick and rusted metal, with a fire escape that zigzagged up the front. The trace led to the entrance and didn’t re-emerge, which meant the cat was still inside.
Settling himself in the lengthening shadows across the street, he looked up.
There it was. Fifth floor. Third window from the left.
The cat he was after sat in the window, an orange shape backlit by the dim glow of the apartment behind it.
Its tail curled around its paws, and it was looking down at him with an expression he'd seen before on superior officers who knew exactly how long you'd been standing in the rain and didn’t give a draanth.
Its eyes caught the light from a passing drone billboard and shone briefly.
A nocturnal predator then, just like a deearin.
Huh, it was certainly bigger than he’d expected.
He folded his arms over his chest, his back against the rough wall behind him as he watched.
There was movement behind the cat… Barnaby. A shadow passed across the window, and then a human female appeared.
She was slight. That was the first thing he registered. Slight and dark-haired, with her hair pulled back from her face. Leaning down, she scooped up the cat, who went boneless in her arms, smug as a fed hound. Thyaar didn't blame it. If a female that soft scooped him up, he'd go limp too.
He scowled at the thought and refolded his arms.
She cradled it against her chest and said something to it, her mouth moving in words he couldn't hear. The cat butted its head against her chin.
His jaw tightened.
That was Lady Emily's cat, which meant this female had taken it.
Stolen it, rather than surrendering it for onward transport with the rest of Lady Emily's belongings, as it should have been.
The eviction notice had been clear: all property was to be left for processing and transportation.
The cat was property. And this female had stolen it.
He stayed where he was, watching. The female disappeared from the window, taking the cat with her, and the light in the window snapped off.
Settling in, he leaned his head back against the wall. Better to wait for night to fall before he made his move. Within a few minutes, though, he noticed movement around him.
It started as a prickle at the back of his neck. It was a sense that came from years of not dying when he should have. He didn't turn or shift his weight… he knew better than that. Instead, he just let his gaze unfocus to track the shapes in his peripheral vision.
There were three of them. Maybe four. Moving through the shadows in a pattern that was probably meant to surround him, but the execution was sloppy. They kept stepping on broken glass. One of them coughed, and another one hissed at him to shut up.
Amateurs.
With a sigh, he stepped a little into the light.
The streetlight revealed the black leather of his uniform and the insignia of the Imperial bodyguard on his collar.
Then there was the fact that no one would mistake him for a human male.
Not with his height and the width of his shoulders. He didn't bother to reach for a weapon.
"By all means," he said, his voice low, "give it your best shot. But I hope for your sakes that the nearest medical facility is within crawling distance."
"Fuck, it's one of them aliens."
There was a pause and a shuffle of feet. And then, just like that, they melted back into the shadows, slipping away between the buildings. The sound of their footsteps faded within seconds, swallowed by the hum of the city at night.
He let out an amused snort.
Okay, smart amateurs.
But he was glad they’d seen sense. That voice had been a lot younger than he'd expected.
A teenager, maybe, or not much older. He had no appetite for hurting children, no matter how stupid their choices were.
And trying to jump a Latharian warrior in a dark alley was about as stupid as those choices got.
He went back to watching the window.
The cat was back.