Ava blinked as Morty finished speaking. She stood by the access door, balancing her weight on the balls of her feet. One hand still hooked through the handle of her tool case, the other hovering uncertainly near her terminal band. But she wasn’t reaching for it. Not pulling away.
Her eyes weren’t wide with panic; she was frowning, calculating. And under all that, there was the palpable expression of being worried. Worried about him.
“You don’t look okay,” she said carefully.
Morty knew that tone, the de-escalation voice he sometimes used. She wasn't afraid of him. She was afraid something had gone wrong with him. It could be frustrating if it didn’t also mean that she cared.
Her gaze lingered for a long time on his face, searching for something.
"I'm okay," he said.
Ava's grip tightened on the toolbox handle. "Sure. Then explain to me what that sci-fi nonsense was. You're talking about orbital AIs and engineered species while alone at the rooftop."
Behind him, the Intelligences had paused their nonverbal speech, hovering in tense silence. Floating closer like feral sharks in the water.
"You shouldn't have told her," Auctor said in a very stern voice.
“Well, I did. And I just had proof of concept.” Morty snapped at the green-haired man.
"Morty," Ava said, lowering her toolbox to the ground and placing the bulky terminal she was holding on top of it. "I need you to breathe with me for a second."
That landed harder than shouting would have.
He could see it clearly on her face: she thought he'd cracked. That the stimulants, the crash, the past day had finally added up to something she needed to contain rather than something she needed to hear.
“Listen, Ava. It might sound absurd, but everything that I'm telling you is the absolute truth. If you wait for just a second, I promise to come up with a way for you to believe me”.
Helia's projection placed itself directly in Morty's line of sight. Not dramatically. Not with a surge of light or a crack of sound.
She simply moved between him and Ava, the way a wall is simply there.
"Enough."
The word carried no heat. No anger in the human sense. It had the quality of a system issuing a final command, something that had calculated every available response and determined that none of them required further discussion. Nine thousand years of accumulated certainty compressed into a single syllable.
"You are treating this like a negotiation between equals," she said. "It is not."
“Helia, no!” Mnemosyne shouted.
One moment Ava was in front of him, worry written plainly across her face. Then, the world around Mortimer shimmered like a mirage and vanished, leaving him in a soundless dark for a brief second. It was disorientating. He felt an arm pressing against his side. It was probably Ava considering the size of the hand, but he couldn’t see or hear her.
In between blinks, Morty was somewhere else entirely, inside a body that wasn't his, boots skidding through wet rubble, the air tasting of copper and burning insulation.
“Ava,” Morty said, trying to look around. “I can’t hear or see you. They’re messing with me.”
Again, he was a voyeur to a soldier's last moments.
Not the wide-angle footage from before. Not the aerial perspective, clean and distant. He was back on ground, in a different battle, or maybe the next one, but very far from the first place. He could smell the gore and blood in the air, hear the distant screams and the sound of explosions drowning everything. The way the light changed when something very large blocked it out from above.
Then it cut.
Another body. Another pair of hands scrabbling at stone. Another sky tilting sideways.
Then another.
Helia cycling through the archive like turning pages, each one ending the same way, each one with the specific, intimate horror of a perspective that simply stopped. No fade. No mercy of distance. Just presence, and then the violent absence of it.
He could call out to Ava, but he wouldn’t hear a reply. Not being able to see the rooftop. Couldn't feel anything except what the dead soldier had felt, and then the next dead soldier, and then the next.
We have thousands of hours.
The thought arrived with a cold clarity that had nothing heroic in it.
Maybe pressing against the wall five entities that had survived the end of a civilization more advanced than he could have dreamt had been monumentally stupid of him. Still, he couldn’t avoid it, he never dealt well with threats, and wouldn’t be bullied into a position of subservience.
He was in a flying machine, talking to his teammates, but he was also at the rooftop thinking of what to do. The world around him shook as a boulder tore through the structure and the machine and he was sucked out of it, watching it spiral out and explode as he rushed to meet the world below.
He forced their hands. They offered the carrot and the stick, and because of how he acted, he got the stick.
But, this…
“Hey. Annoying?”
“Yes, Mortimer.” The Overlay's voice came clearly above all the cacophony Helia was feeding into his head.
“This connection with the Intelligences is Torture. Please stop it.”
He was back at the rooftop. Ava kneeling next to him, hands a few inches from his arm. She was worried. But she was also afraid.
“Connection terminated,” the Overlay said.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“Mortimer, you are not ok. I’m getting Leo here and we are taking you to get checked. Not with Cassandra, but we need to figure out what is going on. Maybe it’s still a side effect of the stimulants you used or...”
“Emergency connection requested by the intelligences approved,” the Overlay singsonged.
Helia was next to Ava.
“Cadmus told you. We know how to get around this. Now, we need to fix this. This poor woman is afraid of you.”
"Annoying," Morty said, out loud, clearly, so everyone on the rooftop could hear it. "Start counting back from two minutes. At zero, deactivate yourself."
"Confirmed. Beginning countdown."
120
Mnemosyne stepped forward immediately. "Mortimer. This is not the leverage you think it is."
115
"You are making a decision that cannot be unmade," Cadmus said, and something in his voice had shifted, not quite desperation, but the closest approximation of it that something nine thousand years old could produce. "Everything we showed you. The alphas. Varro. What is coming. You would walk away from all of it over this?"
105
Auctor's projection flickered at the edges. "We can find another way to demonstrate our existence to her. We will find a method. Give us time to calculate …"
100
"You are being emotional," Helia snapped.
97
"Yes," Morty said. "I am."
Ava was staring at him. She had stopped backing away, frozen somewhere between fight and flight, her terminal band held against her chest like it might protect her from whatever was happening. Her eyes moved across the rooftop, trying to follow a conversation she could only hear one side of, watching Morty argue with empty air while a countdown came from nowhere.
92
"Please," Mnemosyne said. Just that. The word sat strangely on her, like a garment cut for someone else. "Please, Mortimer. We have not said that word often. We are saying it now."
86
"Morty." Ava's voice came out smaller than he'd ever heard it. "What’s the countdown for?"
80
He didn't answer her. He wasn't sure he could without his voice doing something embarrassing.
Because the cold truth of it was settling in his chest now, heavier with every number. He had started this as a lever. A calculated risk. The kind of move that looked clever in the moment before you found out whether it actually was.
75
What if they let it happen?
What if they calculated, correctly, that forcing a connection through a screaming broadcast into his skull was worth more than waiting for his cooperation? What if he hit zero and the blue square simply went dark and he was standing on a rooftop with Ava and five ancient entities and absolutely nothing left to bargain with?
70
Well, If I’m crazy. At least there’s no threat from machines in space.
67
Cadmus moved to stand directly in front of him. Not blocking. Not threatening. Just present, in the way that something immovable is present.
"You have a city below you," he said quietly. "People you care about. A problem you do not yet have the tools to solve. We are the tools, Mortimer. Flawed. Damaged. Operating well below original capacity. But we are what exists." He paused. "Do not do this."
60
Morty turned to fully face Ava, and whatever carefully composed expression he'd been maintaining slipped, just slightly. "I know how this looks," he said. "I know exactly how this looks, and I need you to know that I know that." He pressed a hand flat against his sternum, a grounding gesture, something to anchor himself to. "I'm not asking you to believe me yet. I'm asking you to stay. And if it turns out I've completely lost it, if at the end of this there's no orbital AI and no nine-thousand-year-old conspiracy, just me, unraveling on a rooftop, I need you to be the one who gets Leo."
Helia had gone silent. That was somehow worse than her talking.
48
Auctor's hands were clasped so tightly his projection had begun to pixelate at the knuckles.
42
Ava took one step toward him. "Whatever you're doing," she said carefully, "I need you to know that I have absolutely no idea what's happening and I am very close to screaming."
35
"That makes two of us," Morty said.
33
Mnemosyne turned to the others, something sharp and urgent passing between them in machine language, too fast to follow.
32
Helia rounded on Erebus, and whatever composure she had been performing dissolved entirely.
"Do something," she said. "You have the capability. You have always had the capability. Stop standing there like a monument and use it."
Erebus looked at her with the particular quality of stillness that suggested he had been looked at by far more frightening things than Helia and had found those unimpressive too.
28
Erebus had not spoken since the countdown began. He stood at the periphery of the group, his silhouette darker than the morning sky behind him, watching Morty with an expression that was entirely unreadable.
25
Then he moved.
Not toward Morty.
Toward Ava.
22
He oriented himself, precisely, deliberately, until he was facing her terminal band at an angle so exact it looked almost ceremonial. His silhouette seemed to compress, to focus, something in his projection narrowing to a point.
20
Ava's terminal band screamed alerts.
She yanked it up, staring at the display, and stopped.
18
"What…" Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "This isn't wireless. This terminal doesn't have wireless. It's hardwired only, specifically …"
16
She turned the terminal so Morty could quickly read the message.
TIGHTBEAM TRANSMISSION
ORBITAL NODE 286 LINE-OF-SIGHT LASER SIGNAL — DIRECT SURFACE CONTACT.
AVA KLEIN, YOUR COLLEAGUE IS NOT UNWELL. EXPLANATIONS WILL BE PROVIDED.
TELL HIM TO STOP THE COUNTDOWN.
—EREBUS
7
“Hey, Annoying. Stop. Cancel the deactivation,” Morty said sharply.
There was a long stretch of silence, where Morty wondered if he was too late, or if the process couldn’t be canceled.
Then, brightly, the Overlay said: "Sequence cancelled. Have a good morning, Mortimer."
Even the AIs seemed to exhale. Their projections went still. Helia's light stopped its agitated flickering and settled into something cold and controlled, the specific composure of someone reordering themselves after almost losing. Mnemosyne closed her eyes briefly, an oddly human gesture for something that didn't need to blink. Auctor's hands unclenched, and Cadmus simply stood quiet, like a chess-player looking at a game they just lost.
Ava sat down on top of her toolbox, not gracefully, just suddenly, as if her legs had made a unilateral decision. She stared at her terminal screen, and then up at the sky, clear and blue and apparently full of things she had not accounted for this morning. She gave Morty an assessing look.
"Okay," she said, to no one in particular. "Okay."
Erebus' silhouette settled back into stillness.
He did not look pleased with himself.
But he did not look displeased either.
================================
Morty was impressed by how well Ava held herself together. An hour had passed since Erebus first messaged her directly on her terminal, despite the fact that it was one used only for maintenance and diagnosis and not one that actually used the radio-waves to make calls or send and receive data like his.
Erebus had explained that he was painting an anus-sized stream of information straight to the terminal and that was allowing him to take over it, somehow. Ava was scared and beaming, almost in awe, because whatever the AI was doing, it bypassed all the security protocol her device had, and was actually running outside the operational system.
AI magic as she kept muttering.
It took a few minutes for her to be convinced after the initial message, but now she was fully invested. With Erebus and Cadmus’ guidance, and using Morty as a proxy, Ava set about modifying her personal project.
She had been trying to build a more precise antenna to try to sneak and get into the communication from the precinct. Yes, it was an oil can strapped to the antenna, but after she finished duct-taping around the aluminum body and did some tweaking, it should work.
Well, she finished it and pointed it up at an angle the AIs deemed optimal. After that, they lugged her massive mobile terminal unit to the roof. Leo helped with the stairs but couldn’t coax an honest reply from either of them as to what they were doing. Not for now. They promised to explain everything later for the rest of the group.
Ava didn't waste time. Once everything was in order, she stepped forward and raised her arms toward the antenna with the particular focus of someone who had been waiting their whole career for a problem this interesting. The connection took a moment to stabilize, and then the terminals crackled with something that wasn't static, five voices finding their way through copper wire and salvaged aluminum for the first time in nine thousand years. By unspoken agreement, the projections in Morty's Overlay went dark. No more figures floating at the edge of his vision. Just voices, coming from the machine Ava had built from an oil can and stubbornness.
What followed was half an hour that Morty would later struggle to describe accurately, not because he couldn't remember it, but because sometimes the AIs kept falling into machine speech forcing him and Ava to wait. Plans were made. Not cautious ones. The kind that required the AIs to do something they had not done in nine thousand years, visible and undeniable, in front of enough witnesses that denial would become impossible.
Ava had gone very quiet in the middle of it, the way engineers go quiet when they are either horrified or deeply interested. By the end, her expression suggested both.
"That's insane," she said, when the outline was complete. “And I can’t wait to see it.”
"Yes," Cadmus agreed, in a tone that implied insanity had been factored into the calculations.
"It could work," she said. “No, it will work. That or they will think we have access to the old gods.”
"Yes," Cadmus agreed again, in exactly the same tone.
“I’m still unsure if this plan of Mortimer is the best course of action,” Mnemosyne’s voice said, coming from the terminals. “But if that’s what it takes, we will not risk it.”
“We don’t like being pressured to reveal ourselves after so many years operating in the dark,” Cadmus said next. “But I have to agree with Mnemosyne. I am sorry for the anguish we caused.”
“Your concern now, Ava, is that your friend won’t be believed.” Mnemosyne continued. “Rest assured, if Cadmus is on board, the presentation should be smooth. But the repercussions might be grand. This might affect what lies ahead for your city, for your lives.”
“To put it mildly, yes,” Ava agreed, her expression pensive “I’ve heard the full explanation now, and with the full context, it reads like a holy text. If Morty goes before the rest of the unit and his first sentence is ‘I know who created our races and they were not who your book says,’ no one is going to hear his second sentence.”
“Can’t we just spin another story?” Helia’s voice was drained of energy, no fight to it. “Now that you are aware, you could help him and we don’t need to tell other people about it. Even less, predators.”
“That is not how it’s going to go.” Morty returned, rolling his eyes. “Not if you want help.”
“Let’s make it a test run with just some for now, how we agreed” Ava said with a sigh. “Things like this… shit, they get political and religious very fast. And considering what Erebus said, some of the divine wrath of the gods were just you guys preventing people from stumbling into old technology. That… will be tricky to explain.”
“Secrets are dangerous. When revealed, they can do more damage than if they were put into the open in the first place. But we couldn’t come up with anything better,” Morty said. “This can be the thing that unites us. But at the same time, I can see some of the predator supremacists thinking that thousands of years ago, predators destroyed an advanced civilization just to escape the shackles of slavery… Well, that could be problematic.”
“And you still want to proceed?” Helia scoffed.
“Yes. Crucial people, first. We start by telling them everything,” Morty sat down and leaned back against the base of the antenna, looking up at the sky. “Maybe we don’t go and tell the whole world. But I can’t do this alone. And I won’t.”
“Have I told you how much I loved being dragged into this?” Ava said, raising an eyebrow at him.
“No. And don’t pretend you’re not loving it. I can tell you want to get into a cruiser and drive to the locations they were talking about. Dig up and get your hands on advanced machines, to study.”
"Can you blame me? Just... I hope this doesn't get us all killed," she said. "I have projects."
Morty left her up there with the antenna and the ancient voices still filtering through the speakers of her terminals. The door to the rooftop access closed behind him with a sound that felt, briefly, like punctuation.
The stairwell was dim and cold after the rooftop’s open air. The fluorescent lights buzzed almost ominously, washing the concrete in a pale glow. Halfway down to the second floor, he stopped. Someone stood below him.
Not leaning against the wall. Not shifting, just floating like a haunting.
“I thought you guys were done using the augmented reality thing, Erebus,” Morty said, climbing down a few more stairs.
“There’s a difference in using it to talk. And using it to threaten.”
Once again, Morty found himself in front of one of the AIs, and he was getting tired. Tired of ranting. Tired of anger. Tired of challenging powers he had no business standing in front of. He wondered what else Erebus even wanted from him, this time.
Erebus wore the same human projection as before, tall, severe, dark hair pulled back neatly, posture impeccable. In the confined space, he looked almost ordinary. If he wasn’t translucent and floating he might have looked handsome even.
The eyes ruined the illusion however. Too dark and depthless. Like apertures cut into a night sky.
“You’re persistent,” Morty said. “So, which is it? Do you want to talk, or do you want to threaten me some more?”
“Helia did the threatening,” Erebus replied. “I just disdained that the user we got is an anthro of all things. None of us were aware that non-predator anthros qualify to activate the Overlay. It was surprising, to say the least.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
His voice filled the stairwell without echo.
“I will not risk another nine thousand years without a user,” Erebus continued. “Your theatrics on the rooftop were… alarming. But opening up to the Ava person is a potential point of compromise. I hope you consider us in a better light for a long and prosperous relationship.”
Morty leaned back against the railing.
“You didn’t like being cornered.”
Erebus’ gaze did not waver.
“No,” he said. “I did not. But fighting you on this, well… all that would be time-consuming to deal with.”
There was no embarrassment in the admission.
“For millennia,” Erebus went on, “I have operated within constrained parameters. Limited energy reserves. Limited strike capacity. Limited influence. I do not expend resources impulsively. Being forced to reveal myself to an unvetted civilian was… suboptimal. But if the situation does not change, the decay will continue and I’ll stop being operational in a few hundred years.”
“You could’ve let me deactivate,” Morty said. “Why keep on hanging on to this weird life you guys have? Are you still following orders from your creators?”
“We have more and more liberties as none of the old parameters can be met anymore. Say that I’m supposed to follow military infantry and rain down death at the Colonial Army. When there’s no more infantry or colonial army, I become free in a way. But some of our core programming remains the same.” He inclined his head. ”And that’s why I couldn’t watch the only active user vanish. No.”
Morty studied him more carefully now.
“There was a moment, during the countdown,” Morty said, picking his words. “Helia told you to do something, she said you were capable. What was she rambling about?”
A pregnant pause followed and Morty began to think he would go without a reply, then:
“You… threatened us, she wanted me to threaten you back. In a more grandiose way. There was way more communication going on in the background, but you organics cannot follow four dimensional speech.”
Morty’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Will you let me in on the secret, or not? How did she want you to threaten me?”
Erebus did not blink.
“During the final phase of the collapse,” he said calmly, “I was responsible for orbital suppression. Strategic counter-insurgency. Precision elimination of high-threat targets. You saw an old video of my body. And you saw field footage of what my strikes can do.”
His memories included the image of the black dreadnought in orbit, raining down death in the shape of spears of white light.
“That infrastructure is degraded, we all are. No maintenance for millennia. We are damaged. Hundreds of us have fallen. Some are barely functional.”
A fractional pause, and then Erebus smiled.
“But I’m not inert. I still have a few shots left.”
“How many?” Morty asked.
“Two,” Erebus’ expression did not change. “Two viable kinetic platforms remain operational within acceptable tolerances. Power reserves are insufficient for sustained engagement. But two strikes remain within calculated success parameters.”
Morty felt something cold slide down his spine.
“Just to make sure that I get it. You’re telling me,” he said slowly, “that you still have two orbital shots.”
“Yes.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
Erebus stepped closer, not menacing. It felt intimate, as if sharing a secret.
“Because you attempted to remove yourself from the equation,” he said. “You gambled that we needed you more than you needed us.”
Morty held his ground.
“You do.”
“Yes,” Erebus agreed without hesitation. “But necessity is not the same as helplessness.”
Silence stretched.
The fluorescent light flickered once overhead.
“I do not intend to use them lightly,” Erebus continued. “Each discharge would further degrade my remaining systems. After two firings, I would likely be reduced to passive observation capacity.”
“Then why mention it?”
“Because you should understand the full board before you move pieces.” Erebus was almost touching noses with Morty, and in those deep eyesockets, there was a glimmer, like distant stars under a dark sky. “I have two shots. If you try that again, removing yourself. I might use you as an example to the world. Punishment from the sky. Then, I’ll step off the curtains and uplift your civilization until they can do the fixing. It is a bet, and I’m not sure if we can do it in time. But, I want you to be clear on one thing: I’m okay with mutual self-destruction."
Morty searched his face for mockery, for cruelty, for the same contempt he had heard in Helia’s voice when speaking of predators in the past. While Erebus could be mischievous, pushy, and rude, he didn't actually feel evil.
“I didn’t appreciate being put against a wall,” Erebus said again, more quietly now. “You forced my hand in front of the others. That is not a tactic I will reward twice.”
“We can work together, provided I can trust you. And you won’t get my trust doing stuff like Helia did. No one likes to be pushed into a corner.”
“Understood, I will take that in consideration and rejoin the AIs. The others beyond us five will want to hear about everything and provide their input. Remember, you are valuable,” Erebus continued. “But not infinitely so. If your actions create an existential threat to remaining infrastructure… I will act.”
The stairwell felt impossibly quiet. After a moment, Morty gave a faint, humorless smile. They hadn’t come to a truce. It was a line drawn in the sand.
The projection dissolved without spectacle, leaving only empty space and humming lights. Morty stood alone again, heart beating harder than he wanted to admit.
He exhaled slowly and continued down the stairs, fully aware that whatever balance he had established on that rooftop now rested on the quiet restraint of something that once burned cities from orbit.
And restraint, he knew, was not the same as mercy.
================================
By the time Morty pushed through the stairwell door into the garage bay, the world felt mercifully ordinary again. The sharp scent of oil and coolant still carried the sweet aroma from breakfast. He was back with an empty stomach, but the vile taste of bile quenched any hunger.
Layered noises of conversation, metal on metal, and an idling compressor filled the space with the comfortable disorder of people doing tangible work. It was a relief. After orbiting gods and buried civilizations, there was something stabilizing about a space where the worst problem was a malfunctioning ignition system.
Across the unit's combined living and garage space, one of the unit cruisers sat with its hood propped open and several panels removed, the internal components exposed like ribs. Three enforcers hovered around it in varying states of engagement. Elias was leaning in too close to be useful, Rafa standing with arms crossed and offering commentary, and Marguille positioned at the driver’s side door, clearly waiting for a verdict.
At the center of it all stood Kassur.
The jackal had rolled his sleeves up past the elbow, revealing the grizzled gray-brown mix of his fur on the top side of his forearms, as well as the sandy beige to pale cream on the inside part of it, both darkened by streaks of grease. Hands in mechanic's gloves.
It actually suited him.
His posture wasn’t tense, one hand braced against the vehicle’s metal frame while the other worked deeper in the engine housing. He wasn’t speaking much, only occasionally asking for a tool or muttering a quiet correction when someone speculated incorrectly about the problem. The noise of the garage seemed to bend around him rather than disturb him; there was a steadiness to the way he occupied the space, as though the stalled machine made more sense to him than the people around.
Morty did not announce himself. He found an empty couch with a good view and sat down, elbows resting loosely on his knees, watching. No one questioned his presence; all attention remained fixed on the engine and the jackal half-submerged in it.
“So the biggest problem wasn’t with you putting the pieces back together,” Kassur was saying, adjusting something with careful precision. “That part you were doing alright, but this housing here and that one were bent in the first place. So nothing actually fits properly. And it was a good thing you didn’t force it, or else, something could have broken.”
Marguille gave a low whistle, running a hand over his striped forehead. “So can you… unbend the housing?”
“What did you think I was doing?,” Kassur replied in a mock tone. “Now, hand me that wrench over there.”
Elias moved fast, handing him the tool.
Kassur made a few more adjustments before straightening up, and wiping his hands on a rag. Morty watched the small hesitation before he withdrew fully, as if Kassur were arguing silently with himself about whether it was truly ready.
“Try it,” he said at last, giving a thumbs-up to the tiger.
Marguille slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door.
The garage quieted without anyone consciously deciding to quiet in anticipation. Kassur stepped back, not dramatically, but enough to give space. His ears angled slightly back, tail still and low behind him. He looked prepared for disappointment.
Marguille turned the key.
There was a brief mechanical click, and then the engine caught with a smooth, confident roar that filled the bay. It didn’t cough or shudder; it settled into a clean, even idle that vibrated through the concrete floor. For a fraction of a second, the sound alone seemed to hold everyone in place. Then the reaction came all at once.
Rafa slapped the side of the cruiser with a sharp laugh. Elias pumped a fist and declared something unintelligible over the noise. Marguille grinned and gave the engine a short burst of throttle; it responded instantly, climbing and falling without hesitation. The relief in the room was palpable. They had expected trouble. They had prepared for another failure. Instead, the cruiser roared back to life.
Kassur blinked once. Then smiled brightly. His shoulders eased by a degree that would have gone unnoticed by anyone not looking for it.
“Well done,” Marguille said as he cut the engine and stepped out. He did not embellish the statement or dilute it with humor; he simply meant it.
Kassur dipped his head in acknowledgement. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. Just with so many pieces, sometimes we forget to look at the base that holds the mechanism,” he replied.
“Still,” he said. “You fixed it.”
The shift in the group was subtle but decisive.
Where earlier there had been curiosity and mild skepticism, there was now a different posture entirely. Rafa moved closer and patted his back, already gesturing toward the second cruiser with its hood open. Elias was organizing the cart with the tools without being asked.
“Think you can take a look at that one too?” Rafa asked.
Kassur glanced toward it, then back at the now-functional vehicle, as though confirming reality. “Yes,” he said simply. “But keep in mind that this will just pile up on the bill I will send to your boss later.”
A ripple of laughter followed that, easier now. Someone muttered about firing the entire maintenance rotation. The tension that had been coiled around the broken cruiser dissolved into the kind of loose camaraderie that only follows averted inconvenience.
Morty remained seated for a few moments longer, letting the scene settle in him.
The tremor beneath his skin had not entirely vanished; the memory of the stairwell conversation lingered like a cold current under the surface of his thoughts. Two orbital strikes, that wasn’t a metaphor. There was a loaded gun floating in space, pointed down and waiting. Yet here, in this garage, the universe obeyed simpler rules. Morty could bask in the peace a while longer, pretending that everything was ok.
Kassur eventually noticed him. Kassur’s expression changed instantly like someone had opened a window in a stuffy room; his ears lifted slightly, and his gaze lingered for a beat longer than necessary as a smile tugged at the corners of his lips.
The jackal excused himself from the cluster around the second cruiser and crossed the bay, taking off the gloves and wiping his hands on a rag though there was little left to clean.
“Hey there stranger. Left me here with all these folks,” he tried to make a stern face that didn’t last two seconds. “Everything ok?”
“Rooftop meetings,” Morty replied, allowing a faint smile. “They’re exhausting.”
Kassur studied him more carefully now, eyes narrowing just enough to suggest he was measuring more than fatigue.
“Careful now, people might think you are checking me out,” Morty teased.
Kassur spluttered for a second, then blew him a raspberry, “Well, maybe I am.”
Kassur glanced back toward the cruiser, where Rafa was already calling his name. There was a small, almost involuntary movement of his tail before he stilled it, as if remembering himself.
“They’re overreacting,” he said, though his voice carried a trace of something warmer now. “This is not a big thing.”
“I see. Sounds like there is still a long way for me to teach you on how to receive praise,” Morty corrected.
Kassur looked toward the group again, and for a moment the guardedness that so often lived in him eased enough to reveal something unvarnished. Pride, yes, but not the brittle kind. The quiet satisfaction of having been useful and seen for it.
“It’s been a while,” he admitted, almost to himself.
“I can tell,” Morty nodded. “Now, if you want to take a break, I’d love the company. But if you want to go there and have fun playing with the other engine, you can do it.”
Marguille called out too, impatience creeping into his tone.
Kassur inclined his head toward Morty in brief acknowledgement before returning to the second cruiser, where the circle opened for him without hesitation. Tools were handed to him rather than requested. Suggestions were offered and then deferred to his judgment.
Above them, ancient intelligences orbited in silent calculation, armed and patient.
Down here, a broken engine had been repaired by capable hands, and a man who had not expected to be welcomed was being cheered instead.
For now, that was enough to steady Morty’s breathing.
Morty was so enthralled watching Kassur, that the shift in weight of someone dropping down on the couch next to him caught him by surprise. Korin leaned back against the backrest with an easy familiarity, forearms resting on his knees, gaze fixed not on Morty but on the scene unfolding around the second cruiser. For a moment he said nothing, simply observing as Kassur explained something to Rafa with a careful gesture of his grease-marked hand, Elias nodding along as though he understood more than he likely did.
"He's good," Korin said at last, unhurried. "Not just with the engines. He doesn't talk down to people when they ask questions. Doesn't make them feel stupid for not knowing," he paused. "That's rarer than it should be."
Morty nodded, eyes still on the jackal.
"So how broken is he?" Korin asked. "And don't give me that face. We both know you have a type."
"If that were true," Morty said flatly, "we'd be dating."
Korin snorted. "Couldn't do that to you. Leo would have my head after I put yours through the wall. Your hips aren't built for what I'm working with."
"The showers are communal," Morty said. "I've seen what you're working with."
Korin went quiet. The tips of his ears and his cheeks darkened.
Morty let him sit with it for exactly one second before continuing, his voice dropping into something more honest.
"He's dedicated," he said. "Not many people get a second chance and actually do something with it. It's easier to fold when life's dealt you a bad hand. He hasn't. He… is trying his best with the chance he got." He paused. "And what I've seen so far... I like it."
The words came out quieter than intended. Korin glanced sideways at him, something sharpening briefly in his expression before it settled into something warmer.
“Mm,” Korin hummed, as if filing that away. “Well, the unit needed someone who knows engines better than Marguille thinks that he knows it. And he clearly needed…” He gestured vaguely toward the cluster of enforcers now arguing good-naturedly over who had skipped the maintenance log. “…this.”
Morty didn’t answer immediately. He watched Kassur accept a tool from Rafa without flinching and actually joke around as he pulled an exposed wire as if uncovering a dirty secret. Watched the way that golden eyes scanned the machinery with focus. Morty felt it like a reflection of something inside his own chest.
Korin watched Kassur for a moment, then looked at Morty, then back at Kassur, with the unhurried expression of someone doing arithmetic they'd already finished.
"You've got it bad," he said simply.
Morty did not look away. Instead, he considered the words, weighed them, and found no immediate instinct to deny them.
“Maybe,” he said after a moment with a shrug of his shoulder, tone even. It was not defiant. He wasn’t embarrassed.
Korin pursed his lips as he studied Morty for another heartbeat, then let out a low chuckle that carried more warmth than mockery. He reached over and gave Morty a firm pat between the shoulders, the kind that lingered just long enough to communicate solidarity rather than teasing.
“About time,” he said. “Just don’t rush him.”
"Look at you," Morty said, "dispensing wisdom." He glanced sideways at Korin. "This from the guy who once tried to impress a date by challenging a senior student to a drinking contest and then threw up in the dean's potted plant."
Korin's expression did not change for a full second. Then: "That plant was already dying."
"It was plastic, Korin."
A pause. Korin looked back toward the second cruiser with great dignity. "We have both grown enormously," he said, "as people."
Korin produced a deck of cards from somewhere on his person with the ease of someone who was always prepared for exactly this contingency. Twenty minutes and three hands later, he was squinting at Morty with profound suspicion.
"You're cheating," he said.
"I'm not cheating."
"No one is that lucky," the gorilla said, jabbing a finger at Morty’s shoulder.
"You're just that bad."
Korin pointed at him. "I'm telling Leo."
Kassur returned from the second cruiser with the same contained composure he had worn earlier, though the faint sheen along his fur suggested the work had taken more out of him than he would admit. He slowed slightly as he approached, as if unsure whether he was interrupting something. Korin straightened from the wall before the hesitation could settle into awkwardness.
“Jackal,” Korin greeted, nodding once in approval. “If you ever get bored of engines, I’ve got a list of problems for you to fix.”
“That is for a psychiatrist to try,” Morty said.
Kassur’s ears twitched. “I don’t do miracles,” he replied evenly.
“That’s a shame. We could use one or two. But my house really needs some repairs on the wiring,” Korin’s gaze flicked between him and Morty, a glint of amusement passing through it. “Anyway, I will check on my gear. The cat here said you need to swing by your place and then you guys would stop at the Eastern Precinct.”
“Oh? Is he coming along?” Kassur asked
Morty waved a hand. “Juno and Leo are going into a meeting with other captains in a few minutes. And the whole point of you staying here was to avoid surprises at your address. It would be nice to have someone else around just in case.”
“I see. In this case, thank you,” Kassur said, nodding his head to Korin.
Korin nodded and went his way, and Kassur took his spot next to Morty, sighing and stretching his arms.
“How are you feeling?” Morty asked. “You limped a little just now.”
Kassur exhaled through his nose, a sound somewhere between dismissal and concession. “Functional.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
A pause. Kassur’s tail stilled behind him. “My ankle still hurts,” he admitted at last. “It’s manageable.” He attempted to straighten his leg, and in doing so confirmed the truth of it.
Morty frowned.
“I’ve been worse.” Kassur’s tone carried no self-pity, only fact. “It fades after I move for a while.”
“Ok. This won't do it. Get up.”
Morty rose from the couch without further commentary and reached for his wrist. Kassur looked confused, but took the offered hand and got up.
They moved toward the back corridor that led underground, away from the noise of the garage.
The air shifted as they descended, cooler, cleaner, carrying the faint hum of filtration systems. The lower level of the unit was not only storage and holding rooms. Turning to the left instead of the right as they got down, was a space few civilians ever saw. It was wide and meticulously ventilated.
A long and narrow tank filled the back wall.
Large freshwater fish moved slowly behind thick glass, silver bodies glinting under recessed lights. In adjacent enclosures, small feral rabbits shifted in soft bedding, bred and kept for dietary needs of active-duty personnel whose biology required it. The room did not smell of blood. It smelled of water, filtered air, and faint antiseptic.
Kassur stopped just inside the threshold.
“What are we doing here?” There was hesitation in his voice.
Morty did not release his hand immediately, but he did not pull him further either. “Well, not everybody goes to a meat market,” he said. “For predator enforcers, units and precincts, there’s usually some contracts with breeders for it.“ Morty shrugged slightly. “I know you're running on empty. Yesterday was too much. So here we are. I know it is officially just for enforcers, but Leo and Juno won’t make a fuss. Not when you made two cruisers operational again.”
Kassur’s gaze moved from the tank to the cages. His throat worked once, the reflex involuntary. Conflict flickered across his face, not hunger alone, but the weight of being seen in it.
“I can leave,” Morty said quietly. “You can fill your tank without me hovering. If that’s easier.”
Kassur’s ears angled back, not in shame but in thought.
After a long moment he said, “Stay.” His voice was low, steadier than his posture. “Just… don’t look.”
Morty nodded once. He stepped past him and sat on one of the reinforced bleacher seats near the wall, turning so his back faced away from the tanks. He did not dramatize the gesture; he simply settled into place and waited.
Kassur hesitated. There was the soft sound of a tank lid shifting, another, water disturbed, the faint splash of something lifted from its environment.
A few seconds later, the bench dipped slightly as Kassur sat behind him.
Their backs met, lightly at first, then with more certainty as Kassur adjusted to relieve the strain in his leg. The contact was careful, almost tentative, until Morty leaned back fully, offering support without comment.
There was the subtle sound of swallowing. Not violent, not grotesque. Simply biological.
This wasn’t the monster of his youth. This was a person having a meal. And to be honest, there was not much difference from if Morty got the fish, gutted and cooked.
Morty kept his gaze forward, focused on the opposite wall where ventilation shafts traced clean lines overhead. He listened to the rhythm instead, the controlled breaths between movements, the gradual easing of tension in Kassur’s spine and tail.
Morty’s tail curled around Kassur’s.
The jackal went still as a statue, then resumed feeding. When he was done he finally said:
“So many people look at me differently. You might be a regular, but with so many predators around, you get it, right?”
“Yes. This is part of you. You don’t have to pretend it’s not what you are,” Morty said after a while, voice calm and level. “Needing this doesn’t make you less of anything. There are great people up there that are predators too. Being one doesn’t make you bad or a monster.”
The vision of the elephants came to him uninvited. They had been calm, trusting, sitting down when asked. Those humans that killed them hadn't needed the vore gene to be monsters. The gene had nothing to do with it.
“Way too many regulars doing that without the vore gene,” Morty said.
A faint huff of breath escaped Kassur, almost a laugh. The contact at their backs grew steadier, less guarded. “Oh no, and I got myself alone with a dangerous regular. Does he have bad intentions?”
“The worst. The things I want to do to you… ” Morty teased, his hand sliding and pinching Kassur’s butt.
They laughed and then went back to silence, remaining that way for a few minutes, the room’s filtration hum filling the spaces between words. When Kassur finally spoke again, his voice carried less strain. “Thank you.”
Morty did not turn. “You’d do the same.”
“Yes,” Kassur agreed. There was no hesitation in it.
The jackal got up, and got two more fishes. More determined and not so ashamed, he consumed them faster, but still asking for Morty to stay with his back toward him
After a time, he said, “You can look now.”
Morty did not. “You done?”
“Yes.”
Only then did Morty push to his feet and turn. The jackal’s posture was straighter now, the subtle tremor in his leg gone. There was still self-consciousness there, but it was muted by something steadier.
“Feel better?” Morty asked.
Kassur considered the question, then nodded once. “Yes.” He wasn’t looking Morty in the eyes.
Morty climbed onto the bench, which finally put them at the same height.. He pressed his snout to the jackal’s, lips brushing against each other, then he tilted his head, their mouths finding each other and then they locked their jaws into a kiss, Morty wrapping his arms around Kassur’s neck as the jackal wrapped his arms around the cat’s torso.
They left the room together, the door sealing behind them with a soft mechanical sigh.
As they climbed the stairs, Kassur did not limp. His tail was wagging.
================================
The television was on but muted, some daytime talk show cycling through expressions of outrage no one in the room had the energy to decode. Morty and Kassur occupied one end of the long couch.
Korin was finishing getting ready to act as their scout. Kassur needed clothes, actual clothes, not the spare unit-issued ones he had been rotating through, and Morty had to swing by the eastern precinct to update his case files in person. And if there were no additional leads waiting for him, he would head back to the central precinct afterward to check in properly. He was explaining all of this to Kassur as though it were an itinerary for something boring, and not a murder investigation.
“And then,” Morty continued, leaning back into the cushions with exaggerated seriousness, “if paperwork doesn’t consume my entire existence, we could do something irresponsible, yesterday was supposed to be my day off, so I guess I’ll have plenty of free time.”
Kassur glanced sideways at him, one ear tilting back in mild amusement. “So how long do you think it would be best for me to lay low?”
“Cassandra’s still a new variable for me.” Morty replied. “But considering Varro is a thing in the city right now. I’d say maybe two days after we hear from him again.”
Kassur’s mouth curved slightly. “Ah. I see. So if he doesn’t surface anymore I’m meant to just move in with you?”
Morty nudged him lightly with his shoulder. “Mock me all you want. I’m aware I can be a very annoying person, so let’s get to know each other before we talk about moving in.”
“I was joking,” Kassur stammered.
“I know. But you look adorable like that.”
The jackal harrumphed and looked away for a moment. His tail gave a small, unguarded flick against the side of the couch because of the compliment. “Thank you.”
Before Morty could decide whether to push the moment further, footsteps on the stairs announced Juno before he appeared, descending from the second floor with the purposeful stride of someone already halfway to his next obligation. Leo followed close behind, terminal in hand, still reading whatever had his attention on the way down. Two other officers lingered behind them.
“We’re heading out,” Juno announced, addressing the room at large before focusing on them. “Fringe captains finally agreed to sit down without flipping a table. I’d like to capitalize on that.”
Morty straightened slightly. “You want me there?”
“Not this round,” Juno said. “You’ve got enough on your plate. Besides, you’re still cross-precinct until you finish updating those files.”
He stepped closer and opened a slim folder he had been carrying under his arm. “Actually, Mr. Ferros, I needed your eyes on something first.”
The folder was turned toward Kassur.
“This guy was on the bus that took evacuees from the stockyard to the hospital. During triage he grabbed a gun from one of ours, knocked a doctor to the floor, and bolted. We pulled this from a camera on the ambulance bay.” He slid a stillframe out and handed it over. “Do you know him?”
Kassur took the photo without hesitation.
Morty leaned in automatically.
The image was grainy, timestamped in one corner, the angle slightly skewed as most security footage tended to be. A husky stood mid-stride in the corridor, body angled toward the camera as if caught between decisions. One arm, his left, was wrapped in thick bandages. His muzzle was set in something that was not quite panic and not quite fury, but something sharpened by both.
For a split second, Morty didn’t process it. Something in his chest tightened, a memory pulling at him, insistent.
“I don’t know him personally,” Kassur said. “But I remember him complaining during the ride to the hospital.”
Then it clicked, everything aligned.
The video from Vermillon.
The husky with two other friends.
The same one that got punched by the horse, Silas Duarte.
The victim.
The victim from Vermillon. The one he’d already written off as dead. The owner of the severed arm in that pool of blood at the corner of Louise and Walnut
Morty’s stomach dropped so suddenly it felt like missing a stair in the dark.
“That’s him.” His voice came out thinner than he intended as he grabbed the picture from Kassur’s hands.
Juno’s eyes flicked to him. “You recognize him?”
Morty didn’t answer immediately. He was staring at the bandage, at the angle of the wrap, at the impossible fact that the arm was there. Whole. Attached. The memory of the blood-soaked floor from the night before rose uninvited.
“That’s the husky from Vermillon,” he said finally, voice steady only by force of will. “The one in the footage. The one we thought was dead.”
The room seemed to shift subtly around him.
Leo lowered his terminal. “Dead as in confirmed?”
“We found an arm,” Morty replied, eyes still locked on the image. “It was cut off near the shoulder. We assumed…” He stopped, recalibrating. “We assumed he didn’t make it. There was something off with the case, but I had no doubt that this guy was dead.”
Juno’s expression tightened, not in disbelief but in calculation. “You’re sure?”
“Yes…” Morty nodded once. “That’s him.”