HOME | DD

Description
It was later. Scarlette sat with her back against a wall, and watched the world go by.

Almost an hour had passed since the end of the last round. Since then the initial rush of the infirmary had abated, and now there was only the quiet sound of feet on tile and the murmur of the nurses as they worked through their charts. As far as she could tell, Bram and LE were sleeping peacefully in an isolated part of the ward and were likely to make a full recovery.

She should have felt pleased at the news, she knew. After all, what sort of technology would allow for that kind of comeback? She’d seen the extent of Bram’s injury--palpated it herself--and as for LE, well, someone shouldn’t be able to just...stop being a roiling goo monster. (Someone shouldn’t be able to turn into one, either, come to think of it, but it seemed like they’d gone past the point of debating the logistics of that some time ago.)

But instead all she could feel was a bone-deep weariness, and the stirrings of envy. They were out of the tournament. They got to sink into blessed unconsciousness and sleep off the nightmare that had been the past...day? Two days? She wasn’t sure anymore.

And here she was, still trapped in a tournament she had no way of exiting. Trapped, now that she thought of it, because she’d done the right thing and saved LE’s life. Because she hadn’t had the sense to use her own watch instead of Bram’s. Because his stupid savior complex had made so much damn sense at the time--

She took a deep breath. It was harder than she’d anticipated; it felt like there was a band stretched tight across her chest, and exhaling only made it tighten further. She drew a slow hand across her eyes, and a slight pressure on top of her head uncurled itself at the movement.

“How you feeling?” said a sleepy voice, and a blinking weasel face lowered itself into her line of vision.

“Could be better,” said Scarlette.

“Ain’t that the truth,” said Ireny, and puddled down the side of Scarlette’s head until she was draped over Scarlette’s shoulder like a tiny Slinky. “I swear to god, when I get back I’m going to have several large chickens and a rabbit.”

“A rabbit?”

“Sorry, that’s the weasel talking,” said Ireny. “Pretend I said lager.”

(And that was another thing to consider: the fact that Ireny, Ireny from college, procrastinating hard-drinking lion-dancing biologist-turned-physical-therapist Ireny, had somehow been compacted into the body of a least weasel and, unless something could be done about it, was likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. This was something she tried very hard not to consider, because for some reason it was stranger to think about than what had happened to LE. She hadn’t known LE, for one thing. She knew Ireny.)

“That’s the thing, though,” Ireny was saying. “You’ve gotta tell me if I’m being weird. If I say, I don’t know, ████ I’d normally never say, call me out on it, okay? Like...flick me in the head or something.”

Scarlette stared at her. The thing about weasels was they were nearly impossible to read--for one thing there was so little of them to begin with, and for another there usually wasn’t a lot to read besides “curiosity” and “bloodrage”--but she thought she heard a note of fear in her friend’s voice.

“It’s just,” said Ireny, and wiggled uneasily. “This is all I’ve got left, you know? Me. And the bits that aren’t me are weasel, and it feels like there’s more and more of those bits by the hour, and less and less of me. And, and it really sucks.”

“I will,” said Scarlette. That was a safe thing to promise, wasn’t it? That was something she could do. Something simple. “But couldn’t you switch out? I was listening when you filled Bellasseau in, but you didn’t say who else you brought with you.”

“If I want to stay understood, my only other option is a scruffy werewolf dude who sounds like an English girl,” said Ireny, and bared her fangs in an apparent grimace. “Which is to say, that’s me thinking the thoughts of two people besides myself, and there’s not enough of me to go around to begin with.”

“Oh,” said Scarlette, and looked down. “I didn’t think--”

“Besides,” said Ireny, “Florian hates my football team. I’ll take chickens over that kind of negativity any day.”

It was stupid, but that drew a tiny smile out of her. “Florian’s a new one. He’s not from Keis, is he?”

“I didn’t bring anyone from Keis with me,” said Ireny. “I mean, I didn’t really have a choice, or anything, but.” Her whiskers twitched as she huffed. “I haven’t really thought about Keis in a while. Or any of our characters. Florian’s not new, he’s from...before college, actually. He’s old. Hadn’t really thought about him for years. Same with Flan and Aedan.”

“But the Publisher pulled them anyway,” said Scarlette. “And you signed up, didn’t you?”

Ireny snorted. “Not for this,” she said, and tilted her head. “Hang on, Bellasseau didn’t say why you signed up, either--and dude, by the way, never making short jokes about him again.”

That pulled a wider smile from her, just for a moment, before reality reasserted itself. “I didn’t sign up. They stole Zozo, and when I ran after him…” She spread her hands wide in a gesture encompassing the Facility.

“Your cat?” said Ireny. She appeared to be thinking. “Blue and white ragdoll, right?”

Scarlette nodded.

“I’ve seen him. At least, I think I have. Right before you turned up, actually.” Ireny slid down to the floor, tumbled once, then bounced upright again. “Come on! If we go now, we could probably still catch hi--”

Scarlette’s watch beeped.

“I could’ve ████ing told you that was going to happen,” said Ireny gloomily. “The rule of narrative comedy is strong here, or something.”

Scarlette didn’t say anything.

“Well, here goes. You have any ideas for the round? We should probably give ‘em a show, whatever it is.”

ROUND 4 START, OPPONENT: IRENY blinked steadily up at her, but Scarlette made no movement to acknowledge the message. So this was how it was going to end, she thought. This was the price she had to pay for harm unwittingly done and blood unwillingly spilled.

Truth be told, it was almost a relief.

“No,” she said.

To her credit, Ireny recovered quickly. “I know how it sounds,” she said, leaning forward. “Believe me, I don’t like it any more than you do. But if we choose something harmless, it’ll go over better with the higher-ups than stalling for time will. I pissed them off once already, okay? I don’t want to do it again.”

Scarlette shook her head. “I don’t want a hand in any of it,” she said, and the words came out with more confidence than she felt. “I’m forfeiting.”

Ireny stared at her, her large eyes unblinking for several long moments. “You can’t do that,” she said at last. “You’re not allowed.”

“Says who?”

“Says the judges!” said Ireny, and if her voice was high-pitched before, it must have risen another half octave now. “If you quit, it’s termination! That’s what Bellasseau said!”

And there was the traitorous thought, winding its way up from the depths of Scarlette’s mind, that termination didn’t seem like such a terrible idea anymore. It lasted only a moment before logic kicked in, but some distant part of her was horrified nonetheless.

“I’m not going to be terminated,” she said instead. “You said yourself they brought your last opponent back from the dead. They want us alive for a reason. Killing me won’t achieve anything.”

“But the thing!” said Ireny frantically. “We have to do the thing. It’s important. Come on! Hide and seek? Tag? A race? Pick something, okay? Anything!”

The weasel’s tail was lashing back and forth, and she was nearly dancing with agitation. Why was she so upset about this? Scarlette wondered. Why couldn’t she just accept the resignation for what it was? Why did she suddenly want to compete?

“Look at it this way,” Scarlette said, trying to keep her voice reasonable. “I get to sit the tournament out, and you’re one step closer to getting your body back. They’ll fix it if you win, right? They’ll have to.”

“It’s not that simple!” wailed Ireny, and there was real panic in her voice now.

Scarlette frowned. Ireny had never been the type to beat around the bush, back home. Something was going on--something she’d evidently elected not to tell Scarlette about. But why? Was it the goo? Something to do with her watch being broken? Or was it something else entirely?

“Listen,” said Ireny, and glanced over her shoulder. Scarlette followed her gaze. The Doctor was nowhere in sight, but considering how quickly he had shooed Bram and her out of the ward last time, she figured it was only a matter of time. “Listen, I know how it feels. You’ve hurt people. You don’t want to keep hurting people. I know. I’m healthcare too, remember? But can you just--just trust me on this? One round. That’s it. That’s all I’m asking. One round, for old times’ sake. For Keis’s sake, if you like.”

Scarlette’s fists clenched involuntarily, and the flash of sudden anger was such a change from the exhausted resignation that had plagued her for the last day or so that she found herself taken aback. What was it? What could possibly be so important that she couldn’t be told, that necessitated her being thrown blindly into yet another round of god knew what?

But she kept her expression neutral. “Why are you doing this?” she said.

“I want to win this fair and square,” said Ireny, which was such a bald-faced lie that Scarlette had to check for a moment to make sure she’d heard correctly. But Ireny’s expression was as blank and honest as only a tiny mammal’s face could be, practically daring her to say otherwise.

She wasn’t getting anything else out of her friend. At least, not here. It was trust her or nothing. And if she couldn’t trust Ireny--

“Bram and I were looking for Zozo when we ran into LE,” she said at last. “Well, we were looking for his friend’s pet Torön, too, but we never did find either of them. So. Same thing as last round. First person to find my cat wins. Is that a good enough contest for you?”

A pause. Then Ireny’s fangs flashed white in a sudden, relieved grin. “You’re on.”

---

At first glance, her watch’s internal storage was incomprehensible. There were more partitions than Leafy could shake a stick at, most of them apparently pointless. There were folders labeled “PINK.EXE” and “WOBBLY.ISO” in drives with names that were little more than unreadable strings of letters and numbers. And everywhere she looked, there were blank files, apparently only there to take up space and do little else.

It would have taken a genius to even begin to make sense of the chaos. Luckily, she had Cutie on hand to help her out.

Most of it was exactly what it looked like, she realized as the data rolled across her screen. It was filler, designed to confuse and mislead the casual viewer while the real work went on behind the scenes. And it had been pretty masterfully done, to boot: it was at least an hour and the sun was well above the horizon before she broke through the last firewall and found what she was looking for.

Character records. They loaded slowly, one by one. There was Jed, there was Terrisa, and--significantly larger than the others, and taking nearly a full minute to load--there was Cutie. Most of it was numbers and acronyms she didn’t recognize, but she could see there was more information there than she had time to process at the moment: height, weight, vitals, exact body composition. Even as Leafy watched, Cutie’s file increased in size, and more data scrolled across her vision. Was that because she was in Cutie’s body at the moment? If she switched out, she’d lose what progress she’d made, but she was willing to bet it was.

Okay, so they were keeping tabs on the characters the contestants were using. That wasn’t weird in and of itself, was it? So why did it make her more nervous and not less?

Leafy paused. There was one more file, and from the look of it, it was even larger than Cutie’s. The filename read CANDIDATE-TPC08. She opened it and waited impatiently as the progress bar made its painfully slow way across the screen, and as it loaded at long last--

--she found herself staring at her own face.

---

Ireny had thought it would be difficult to retrace her steps, but the gradual and insistent encroaching of Aedan’s weasel brain on hers proved useful for once. She and Bellasseau had left a faint but unmistakable scent trail, and it stood out to her now like lights on a runway.

Still, she couldn’t deny it scared her, a little. Hold on, she told herself. Just...half an hour. Maybe an hour. That’s all. Leafy has to have made progress, and when she figures out what’s going on…

“What’s it like?” she said aloud, in an attempt to distract herself from her thoughts.

“What’s what like?” said Scarlette, from somewhere behind her.

“Actually having your own characters’ voices in your head. I never got the chance. I figure there’s some kind of threshold that has to be reached before it starts happening, and my watch broke too soon, or something.” Ireny glanced back. “I mean, talking to Bellasseau, right? And your other guys? Super weird.”

“Jia mostly thinks in images.” Scarlette shook her head. “The others don’t say much. But it’s...interesting, I guess. Almost indescribable. If Bram was right about the goo--and I’m guessing he was, since I saw it with my own eyes--then the technology involved to make our characters real is…” She trailed off, raising her hands.

“Creepy?” supplied Ireny.

“I was going to say fascinating, but I think you might be right there.”

They came to a stop at the intersection where they had met earlier. It was easy enough to tell where: Ireny’s path and Bellasseau’s diverged for the first time, the former coming from the stairwell whence she’d come, and the latter coming from deeper in the Facility.

Ireny took a deep breath. There, at the edge of sensation, barely present, was a faint but unmistakable whiff of cat.

“Zozo’s been gone for a while, but he was here,” said Ireny. “I’d bet on it.”

“Do you think you can trace him?”

“I can try.” Ireny sniffed. “I think Aedan’s finding it kind of tricky. Cat’s not exactly a prey animal.”

There was something else about the scent, too, she thought, sniffing again. Something...not quite right. She couldn’t pinpoint what, exactly; the scent was too faint, and Aedan hadn’t encountered enough cats in his brief lifetime to know.

“Ireny?” said Scarlette. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said. “At least, I don’t think so. Come on, let’s go.”

The scent stayed faint for another couple hundred meters, but it got stronger as they continued up a flight of stairs and onto the next floor, which was a mixed blessing. On one hand, it meant they were getting closer. On the other hand, there were more pleasant smells in the world than ‘bored male cat occasionally stopping to mark his territory against things.’

But something was definitely off. She was certain of it now. Again there was that brief sensation, of things being turned upside down, of some epiphany hovering just out of reach. Something had been wrong when she saw Zozo the first time, too, she was certain of it, only Aedan’s brain hadn’t registered it, and now she couldn’t remember…

“There,” said Scarlette suddenly. Ireny looked up. Was that a flash of grey? “At the end of the hall. I think I saw--”

“Saw what?” said Ireny, but Scarlette was gone, replaced by a tall, unfamiliar man who was halfway down the hall before she could even blink. “Dude! Wait up!”

So much for not wanting to compete, she thought sourly as she raced down the hall after her friend, her stubby paws blurring under her as she fought to keep up. At least Scarlette’s third character was no lightweight; she could still hear his footsteps long after he’d disappeared from view.

Something slammed, a short distance away. Ireny accelerated, took the corner at full speed, and stopped short as she found her progress impeded by a pair of large double doors.

“What the hell?” she muttered. She could still hear Scarlette’s footsteps on the other side of the door, receding into the distance. Had she closed them after her? That didn’t make any sense; that wasn’t how Scarlette worked, and anyway it wasn’t as if she was in this to win.

Ireny nosed along the bottom of the doors, but they were sealed shut. Someone was interfering. They had to be. It was the only logical explanation. But who?

She scowled and turned to find another way in, and that, of course, was when the dragon attacked.

---

On one hand, Leafy’s file was everything she had been expecting. A birthdate. An eerily detailed biography. More vitals. A subfolder containing a meticulously catalogued collection of her written works. A personality assessment, filled with abbreviations and acronyms she figured she was better off not recognizing.

But it was still creepy, even though she’d been expecting it. To think they’d had all this information on her the whole time! Where had they gotten it? Why had they gotten it, for that matter? Did they have this much dirt on everyone in the tournament?

She dimmed the display momentarily and glanced around at her temporary hiding spot on the roof. Everything was still quiet, for the time being, but how long before her intrusions were detected? There had to be some kind of tracking device in the watch. How long before the Secretary figured out what she was trying to do?

She scrolled automatically through the rest of the file, and was about to close out altogether when a line at the end caught her eye.

AVERAGE SYNCHGEL EXTRACTION POTENTIAL: 68%

Wait. What?

Leafy scrolled back up again, hurriedly scanning through the information around it. More meaningless numbers, more strings of data Cutie’s experience recognized as an attempt at obfuscation, but nestled within it…

CANDIDATE-TPC08 DEMONSTRATES REMARKABLE CREATIVITY AND CONSISTENTLY DISPLAYS INITIATIVE REGARDING MISSION OBJECTIVES. DATA INDICATES ACTIVE AND CONSTANT USAGE OF THE NEURAL LINK DEVICE. SYNCHGEL FEEDBACK CONTINUES TO INCREASE AFTER HER ELIMINATION FROM THE TOURNAMENT, MAKING HER A PRIME CANDIDATE FOR SECONDARY EXTRACTION.

SYNCHRONICITY STRENGTH:
CUTIE: 90%
JEDEDIAH “JED” DUGAN: 45%
TERRISA DEYSPRING: 69%
AVERAGE SYNCHGEL EXTRACTION POTENTIAL: 68%

NOTE: CANDIDATE-TPC08’S RECENT TERMINATION HAS SINCE BEEN REVERSED. WE DO NOT FORESEE ANY ADVERSE EFFECTS ON THE SYNCHGEL AT THIS TIME, BUT ADVISE CAUTION IN FUTURE ENDEAVORS--

There was more, but Leafy barely registered it. As she watched, the number next to CUTIE blinked, then ticked up to 91%.

What was this? No, scratch that, she had the feeling she knew exactly what this was, and she still couldn’t quite believe it.

It didn’t sound possible. It shouldn’t have been possible. But she couldn’t see this being some kind of trick, either.

Taking deep breaths to calm down didn’t work when you were made of stuffing. Besides, there was no time for that. Mind still buzzing frantically, Leafy closed out of the window, cleared her display, and started up Cutie’s blanket. She needed to warn Jay. She needed to warn Ireny.

She needed to warn everyone.

Description
It was later. Scarlette sat with her back against a wall, and watched the world go by.

Almost an hour had passed since the end of the last round. Since then the initial rush of the infirmary had abated, and now there was only the quiet sound of feet on tile and the murmur of the nurses as they worked through their charts. As far as she could tell, Bram and LE were sleeping peacefully in an isolated part of the ward and were likely to make a full recovery.

She should have felt pleased at the news, she knew. After all, what sort of technology would allow for that kind of comeback? She’d seen the extent of Bram’s injury--palpated it herself--and as for LE, well, someone shouldn’t be able to just...stop being a roiling goo monster. (Someone shouldn’t be able to turn into one, either, come to think of it, but it seemed like they’d gone past the point of debating the logistics of that some time ago.)

But instead all she could feel was a bone-deep weariness, and the stirrings of envy. They were out of the tournament. They got to sink into blessed unconsciousness and sleep off the nightmare that had been the past...day? Two days? She wasn’t sure anymore.

And here she was, still trapped in a tournament she had no way of exiting. Trapped, now that she thought of it, because she’d done the right thing and saved LE’s life. Because she hadn’t had the sense to use her own watch instead of Bram’s. Because his stupid savior complex had made so much damn sense at the time--

She took a deep breath. It was harder than she’d anticipated; it felt like there was a band stretched tight across her chest, and exhaling only made it tighten further. She drew a slow hand across her eyes, and a slight pressure on top of her head uncurled itself at the movement.

“How you feeling?” said a sleepy voice, and a blinking weasel face lowered itself into her line of vision.

“Could be better,” said Scarlette.

“Ain’t that the truth,” said Ireny, and puddled down the side of Scarlette’s head until she was draped over Scarlette’s shoulder like a tiny Slinky. “I swear to god, when I get back I’m going to have several large chickens and a rabbit.”

“A rabbit?”

“Sorry, that’s the weasel talking,” said Ireny. “Pretend I said lager.”

(And that was another thing to consider: the fact that Ireny, Ireny from college, procrastinating hard-drinking lion-dancing biologist-turned-physical-therapist Ireny, had somehow been compacted into the body of a least weasel and, unless something could be done about it, was likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. This was something she tried very hard not to consider, because for some reason it was stranger to think about than what had happened to LE. She hadn’t known LE, for one thing. She knew Ireny.)

“That’s the thing, though,” Ireny was saying. “You’ve gotta tell me if I’m being weird. If I say, I don’t know, ████ I’d normally never say, call me out on it, okay? Like...flick me in the head or something.”

Scarlette stared at her. The thing about weasels was they were nearly impossible to read--for one thing there was so little of them to begin with, and for another there usually wasn’t a lot to read besides “curiosity” and “bloodrage”--but she thought she heard a note of fear in her friend’s voice.

“It’s just,” said Ireny, and wiggled uneasily. “This is all I’ve got left, you know? Me. And the bits that aren’t me are weasel, and it feels like there’s more and more of those bits by the hour, and less and less of me. And, and it really sucks.”

“I will,” said Scarlette. That was a safe thing to promise, wasn’t it? That was something she could do. Something simple. “But couldn’t you switch out? I was listening when you filled Bellasseau in, but you didn’t say who else you brought with you.”

“If I want to stay understood, my only other option is a scruffy werewolf dude who sounds like an English girl,” said Ireny, and bared her fangs in an apparent grimace. “Which is to say, that’s me thinking the thoughts of two people besides myself, and there’s not enough of me to go around to begin with.”

“Oh,” said Scarlette, and looked down. “I didn’t think--”

“Besides,” said Ireny, “Florian hates my football team. I’ll take chickens over that kind of negativity any day.”

It was stupid, but that drew a tiny smile out of her. “Florian’s a new one. He’s not from Keis, is he?”

“I didn’t bring anyone from Keis with me,” said Ireny. “I mean, I didn’t really have a choice, or anything, but.” Her whiskers twitched as she huffed. “I haven’t really thought about Keis in a while. Or any of our characters. Florian’s not new, he’s from...before college, actually. He’s old. Hadn’t really thought about him for years. Same with Flan and Aedan.”

“But the Publisher pulled them anyway,” said Scarlette. “And you signed up, didn’t you?”

Ireny snorted. “Not for this,” she said, and tilted her head. “Hang on, Bellasseau didn’t say why you signed up, either--and dude, by the way, never making short jokes about him again.”

That pulled a wider smile from her, just for a moment, before reality reasserted itself. “I didn’t sign up. They stole Zozo, and when I ran after him…” She spread her hands wide in a gesture encompassing the Facility.

“Your cat?” said Ireny. She appeared to be thinking. “Blue and white ragdoll, right?”

Scarlette nodded.

“I’ve seen him. At least, I think I have. Right before you turned up, actually.” Ireny slid down to the floor, tumbled once, then bounced upright again. “Come on! If we go now, we could probably still catch hi--”

Scarlette’s watch beeped.

“I could’ve ████ing told you that was going to happen,” said Ireny gloomily. “The rule of narrative comedy is strong here, or something.”

Scarlette didn’t say anything.

“Well, here goes. You have any ideas for the round? We should probably give ‘em a show, whatever it is.”

ROUND 4 START, OPPONENT: IRENY blinked steadily up at her, but Scarlette made no movement to acknowledge the message. So this was how it was going to end, she thought. This was the price she had to pay for harm unwittingly done and blood unwillingly spilled.

Truth be told, it was almost a relief.

“No,” she said.

To her credit, Ireny recovered quickly. “I know how it sounds,” she said, leaning forward. “Believe me, I don’t like it any more than you do. But if we choose something harmless, it’ll go over better with the higher-ups than stalling for time will. I pissed them off once already, okay? I don’t want to do it again.”

Scarlette shook her head. “I don’t want a hand in any of it,” she said, and the words came out with more confidence than she felt. “I’m forfeiting.”

Ireny stared at her, her large eyes unblinking for several long moments. “You can’t do that,” she said at last. “You’re not allowed.”

“Says who?”

“Says the judges!” said Ireny, and if her voice was high-pitched before, it must have risen another half octave now. “If you quit, it’s termination! That’s what Bellasseau said!”

And there was the traitorous thought, winding its way up from the depths of Scarlette’s mind, that termination didn’t seem like such a terrible idea anymore. It lasted only a moment before logic kicked in, but some distant part of her was horrified nonetheless.

“I’m not going to be terminated,” she said instead. “You said yourself they brought your last opponent back from the dead. They want us alive for a reason. Killing me won’t achieve anything.”

“But the thing!” said Ireny frantically. “We have to do the thing. It’s important. Come on! Hide and seek? Tag? A race? Pick something, okay? Anything!”

The weasel’s tail was lashing back and forth, and she was nearly dancing with agitation. Why was she so upset about this? Scarlette wondered. Why couldn’t she just accept the resignation for what it was? Why did she suddenly want to compete?

“Look at it this way,” Scarlette said, trying to keep her voice reasonable. “I get to sit the tournament out, and you’re one step closer to getting your body back. They’ll fix it if you win, right? They’ll have to.”

“It’s not that simple!” wailed Ireny, and there was real panic in her voice now.

Scarlette frowned. Ireny had never been the type to beat around the bush, back home. Something was going on--something she’d evidently elected not to tell Scarlette about. But why? Was it the goo? Something to do with her watch being broken? Or was it something else entirely?

“Listen,” said Ireny, and glanced over her shoulder. Scarlette followed her gaze. The Doctor was nowhere in sight, but considering how quickly he had shooed Bram and her out of the ward last time, she figured it was only a matter of time. “Listen, I know how it feels. You’ve hurt people. You don’t want to keep hurting people. I know. I’m healthcare too, remember? But can you just--just trust me on this? One round. That’s it. That’s all I’m asking. One round, for old times’ sake. For Keis’s sake, if you like.”

Scarlette’s fists clenched involuntarily, and the flash of sudden anger was such a change from the exhausted resignation that had plagued her for the last day or so that she found herself taken aback. What was it? What could possibly be so important that she couldn’t be told, that necessitated her being thrown blindly into yet another round of god knew what?

But she kept her expression neutral. “Why are you doing this?” she said.

“I want to win this fair and square,” said Ireny, which was such a bald-faced lie that Scarlette had to check for a moment to make sure she’d heard correctly. But Ireny’s expression was as blank and honest as only a tiny mammal’s face could be, practically daring her to say otherwise.

She wasn’t getting anything else out of her friend. At least, not here. It was trust her or nothing. And if she couldn’t trust Ireny--

“Bram and I were looking for Zozo when we ran into LE,” she said at last. “Well, we were looking for his friend’s pet Torön, too, but we never did find either of them. So. Same thing as last round. First person to find my cat wins. Is that a good enough contest for you?”

A pause. Then Ireny’s fangs flashed white in a sudden, relieved grin. “You’re on.”

---

At first glance, her watch’s internal storage was incomprehensible. There were more partitions than Leafy could shake a stick at, most of them apparently pointless. There were folders labeled “PINK.EXE” and “WOBBLY.ISO” in drives with names that were little more than unreadable strings of letters and numbers. And everywhere she looked, there were blank files, apparently only there to take up space and do little else.

It would have taken a genius to even begin to make sense of the chaos. Luckily, she had Cutie on hand to help her out.

Most of it was exactly what it looked like, she realized as the data rolled across her screen. It was filler, designed to confuse and mislead the casual viewer while the real work went on behind the scenes. And it had been pretty masterfully done, to boot: it was at least an hour and the sun was well above the horizon before she broke through the last firewall and found what she was looking for.

Character records. They loaded slowly, one by one. There was Jed, there was Terrisa, and--significantly larger than the others, and taking nearly a full minute to load--there was Cutie. Most of it was numbers and acronyms she didn’t recognize, but she could see there was more information there than she had time to process at the moment: height, weight, vitals, exact body composition. Even as Leafy watched, Cutie’s file increased in size, and more data scrolled across her vision. Was that because she was in Cutie’s body at the moment? If she switched out, she’d lose what progress she’d made, but she was willing to bet it was.

Okay, so they were keeping tabs on the characters the contestants were using. That wasn’t weird in and of itself, was it? So why did it make her more nervous and not less?

Leafy paused. There was one more file, and from the look of it, it was even larger than Cutie’s. The filename read CANDIDATE-TPC08. She opened it and waited impatiently as the progress bar made its painfully slow way across the screen, and as it loaded at long last--

--she found herself staring at her own face.

---

Ireny had thought it would be difficult to retrace her steps, but the gradual and insistent encroaching of Aedan’s weasel brain on hers proved useful for once. She and Bellasseau had left a faint but unmistakable scent trail, and it stood out to her now like lights on a runway.

Still, she couldn’t deny it scared her, a little. Hold on, she told herself. Just...half an hour. Maybe an hour. That’s all. Leafy has to have made progress, and when she figures out what’s going on…

“What’s it like?” she said aloud, in an attempt to distract herself from her thoughts.

“What’s what like?” said Scarlette, from somewhere behind her.

“Actually having your own characters’ voices in your head. I never got the chance. I figure there’s some kind of threshold that has to be reached before it starts happening, and my watch broke too soon, or something.” Ireny glanced back. “I mean, talking to Bellasseau, right? And your other guys? Super weird.”

“Jia mostly thinks in images.” Scarlette shook her head. “The others don’t say much. But it’s...interesting, I guess. Almost indescribable. If Bram was right about the goo--and I’m guessing he was, since I saw it with my own eyes--then the technology involved to make our characters real is…” She trailed off, raising her hands.

“Creepy?” supplied Ireny.

“I was going to say fascinating, but I think you might be right there.”

They came to a stop at the intersection where they had met earlier. It was easy enough to tell where: Ireny’s path and Bellasseau’s diverged for the first time, the former coming from the stairwell whence she’d come, and the latter coming from deeper in the Facility.

Ireny took a deep breath. There, at the edge of sensation, barely present, was a faint but unmistakable whiff of cat.

“Zozo’s been gone for a while, but he was here,” said Ireny. “I’d bet on it.”

“Do you think you can trace him?”

“I can try.” Ireny sniffed. “I think Aedan’s finding it kind of tricky. Cat’s not exactly a prey animal.”

There was something else about the scent, too, she thought, sniffing again. Something...not quite right. She couldn’t pinpoint what, exactly; the scent was too faint, and Aedan hadn’t encountered enough cats in his brief lifetime to know.

“Ireny?” said Scarlette. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said. “At least, I don’t think so. Come on, let’s go.”

The scent stayed faint for another couple hundred meters, but it got stronger as they continued up a flight of stairs and onto the next floor, which was a mixed blessing. On one hand, it meant they were getting closer. On the other hand, there were more pleasant smells in the world than ‘bored male cat occasionally stopping to mark his territory against things.’

But something was definitely off. She was certain of it now. Again there was that brief sensation, of things being turned upside down, of some epiphany hovering just out of reach. Something had been wrong when she saw Zozo the first time, too, she was certain of it, only Aedan’s brain hadn’t registered it, and now she couldn’t remember…

“There,” said Scarlette suddenly. Ireny looked up. Was that a flash of grey? “At the end of the hall. I think I saw--”

“Saw what?” said Ireny, but Scarlette was gone, replaced by a tall, unfamiliar man who was halfway down the hall before she could even blink. “Dude! Wait up!”

So much for not wanting to compete, she thought sourly as she raced down the hall after her friend, her stubby paws blurring under her as she fought to keep up. At least Scarlette’s third character was no lightweight; she could still hear his footsteps long after he’d disappeared from view.

Something slammed, a short distance away. Ireny accelerated, took the corner at full speed, and stopped short as she found her progress impeded by a pair of large double doors.

“What the hell?” she muttered. She could still hear Scarlette’s footsteps on the other side of the door, receding into the distance. Had she closed them after her? That didn’t make any sense; that wasn’t how Scarlette worked, and anyway it wasn’t as if she was in this to win.

Ireny nosed along the bottom of the doors, but they were sealed shut. Someone was interfering. They had to be. It was the only logical explanation. But who?

She scowled and turned to find another way in, and that, of course, was when the dragon attacked.

---

On one hand, Leafy’s file was everything she had been expecting. A birthdate. An eerily detailed biography. More vitals. A subfolder containing a meticulously catalogued collection of her written works. A personality assessment, filled with abbreviations and acronyms she figured she was better off not recognizing.

But it was still creepy, even though she’d been expecting it. To think they’d had all this information on her the whole time! Where had they gotten it? Why had they gotten it, for that matter? Did they have this much dirt on everyone in the tournament?

She dimmed the display momentarily and glanced around at her temporary hiding spot on the roof. Everything was still quiet, for the time being, but how long before her intrusions were detected? There had to be some kind of tracking device in the watch. How long before the Secretary figured out what she was trying to do?

She scrolled automatically through the rest of the file, and was about to close out altogether when a line at the end caught her eye.

AVERAGE SYNCHGEL EXTRACTION POTENTIAL: 68%

Wait. What?

Leafy scrolled back up again, hurriedly scanning through the information around it. More meaningless numbers, more strings of data Cutie’s experience recognized as an attempt at obfuscation, but nestled within it…

CANDIDATE-TPC08 DEMONSTRATES REMARKABLE CREATIVITY AND CONSISTENTLY DISPLAYS INITIATIVE REGARDING MISSION OBJECTIVES. DATA INDICATES ACTIVE AND CONSTANT USAGE OF THE NEURAL LINK DEVICE. SYNCHGEL FEEDBACK CONTINUES TO INCREASE AFTER HER ELIMINATION FROM THE TOURNAMENT, MAKING HER A PRIME CANDIDATE FOR SECONDARY EXTRACTION.

SYNCHRONICITY STRENGTH:
CUTIE: 90%
JEDEDIAH “JED” DUGAN: 45%
TERRISA DEYSPRING: 69%
AVERAGE SYNCHGEL EXTRACTION POTENTIAL: 68%

NOTE: CANDIDATE-TPC08’S RECENT TERMINATION HAS SINCE BEEN REVERSED. WE DO NOT FORESEE ANY ADVERSE EFFECTS ON THE SYNCHGEL AT THIS TIME, BUT ADVISE CAUTION IN FUTURE ENDEAVORS--

There was more, but Leafy barely registered it. As she watched, the number next to CUTIE blinked, then ticked up to 91%.

What was this? No, scratch that, she had the feeling she knew exactly what this was, and she still couldn’t quite believe it.

It didn’t sound possible. It shouldn’t have been possible. But she couldn’t see this being some kind of trick, either.

Taking deep breaths to calm down didn’t work when you were made of stuffing. Besides, there was no time for that. Mind still buzzing frantically, Leafy closed out of the window, cleared her display, and started up Cutie’s blanket. She needed to warn Jay. She needed to warn Ireny.

She needed to warn everyone.