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1	A testament to innovation and science, the Albatross Corporation Building stood proud and obnoxious above every other structure in Styrket. From any point in the city where one could see the sky, that same person could partake in the viewing of every profiteer’s darkest, most perverse fantasies in, at the least, a fragment of one of the ACB’s spires. Even the sun, shrouded by the misted morning of  a Trin autumn, knelt to the whims of the Building’s chrome, gave up its brightest rays to it as tribute. The ACB was held up by the earnest struggle led by the people of Styrket, of Trin, of the planet Tilobre itself, before it was able to hold itself aloft by the advancements made decades ago in the field of gravitational manipulation, a discipline hitherto accessible to and employed by only the overclasses. Veins of mazkizz, a bright blue and ephemeral substance essential in the bending of gravity, pulsed energetically around the Building in fifteen to twenty second intervals, brought from its invisible heart to each of the mechanical phallus’s nodes. 
2	The blue-ish, translucent doors at the base of the Albatross Corporation Building slid open with a gentle sigh. In the threshold stood an hourglass of a vixen with brown hair pulled taut into a bun and the shimmering of prescription glasses shielding her oceanic eyes from the sun. Like the cheap barding on a child’s horse, her pencil skirt rode somewhat loose at its lower half, lending itself to the appearance of a religious garment. It was a sheer and flirtatious mockery business and it hugged each feminine hill and valley like that child to its generous mother’s leg. The buxom woman’s left breast was tasked with the burden of carrying her identity, a glimmering silver rectangle with the words, “Ms. Tsutso,” lazered into it.
3	“Welcome to the Albatross Corporation Building,” she spoke with a low, near-masculine drawl that belied her appearance. On the surface, indicated in part by her clearly modified and enhanced figure and facial structure, she appeared as any other upper class Styrketan. Ms. Tsutso would have fit earnestly behind the service desk of a holo-library if only she had a stylus adorning one of her ears. “Do you have an appointment?” Her voice gave the distracting impression of rural Trin.
4	“I do, indeed!” huffed the entering gentleman as the door slipped closed behind him. “I should hope you do not treat every honored guest of Mr. Beakwood’s this way!” He was a youngish and lithe cat of dark marking, a storm cloud gray meadow grass with white wildflowers intruding at random. On both his ears lied proudly two studs, one sapphire and the other ruby, polished as the headlights of Styket’s police cruisers were bright. His clothes were bland and typical of business attire: a neutral suit, neutral slacks, and some manner of shiny loafers. 
5	“Mr. Beakwood isn’t seeing anybody until tomorrow morning, sir,” Ms. Tsutso purred, looking from the man and down to the tablet in her hand. Her thin fingers made quick work of its screen, sliding a document up. The would-be could see several quickly moving windows in the reflection of her glasses, which gave him the impression that she wasn’t reading anything at all. The vixen, brought a finger to her deep red lips. “What is your name?”
6	The cat’s mouth opened, aghast and offended. The face of a man who had never been told no in his life. 
7	“What anarchy is this?!” he cried, flinging his gloved hands above his head, “I’d just spoken to the man this morning! Check again, woman, again! My name is Mr. Adaphid Raenkth! I’m from Githlikth!”
8	“Githlikth, sir?” Ms. Tsutso’s lips curled in malevolence, a sarcastic, belittling grin while she looked up at him from behind her glasses. She said the name again, finding the feeling of it in her mouth to be of a peculiar and precarious decadence. “I’m afraid that none of the information you’ve given me appears in our database.” Ms. Tsutso’s fingers, now less than enthused, swiped again, left to right, eyes still on the man. “If you would take a seat right here,” she continued, gesturing to the waiting room beside her, “we would be happy to begin the meeting application process.”
9	Adaphid Raenkth’s normally gray cheeks erupted into a purplish blush, an all consuming burn that rose up and out of his chest. His posture became dangerously rigid, his ears twitched twice, and his long, pantherine tail flicked from left to right. The door just behind him opened and closed ever slightly with his motions as the device’s sensor beheld his tail and lost it again. He took a moment, instinctively baring his teeth; he took in a deep, strained breath between them. Loud and sharp. His vision pixelated briefly and his chest began to burn, until he remembered to exhale. The whole cycle of physical, emotional, spiritual, panic and rage passed in less than five seconds, but Adaphid would recount it as feeling like an insufferable decade.
10	The application process, Ms. Tsutso said, was projected to take anywhere from an hour to three and a half hours, depending on the status of both the applicant and Mr. Beakwood himself. “The paperwork,” she continued, “is, of course, all done electronically. The devices and the protocols themselves can be set to a number of languages, including High Trinian, Low Trinian, Thuli, Local Sectorian, Sectorian, and Hapistian. It’s important to note that the application and all of its associated files will not save and will become corrupted by our systems if the devices themselves and the protocols are not set to, and remain set to, the same language. What language do you speak in Githlikth? Low Trinian?”
11	The cat, sitting down in a blue chair that smelled of cheap perfume, did his best to ignore her. However, at her last sentence, he growled. “Ma’am, we do speak High Trinian in Githlikth. Same as Styrket.” His padded fingers danced across the screen of the kiosk in front of him. Colors appeared and disappeared as fast as they became and terminated, motes of light from the Styrket skyline. Gentle chimes and jingles, all robotic and artificial—clearly digitally generated, blipped and blooped at each press of a button. It gave the disaffected Adaphid the impression of a children’s soporiphic. 
12	The process began at nine hundred hours and was anticipated to continue on past twelve hundred hours. The applicant forced himself to continually refrain from allowing his attention to be drawn away from the screen and towards the vixen beside him. From his limited vantage point at the height of what could only be a meter, Adaphid’s were permitted only the furtive glance at Ms. Tsutso’s valley of cleavage, borne without sheepishness or shame by the lasciviously shaped dress she wore. Why did he continue to use the prefix? He could just call her Tsutso, or better yet ask her for her first name. Even in considering these questions, the, “miss,” was present as association, if not explicitly included in his mental static. 
13	“Sir, you don’t want to be timed out,” Ms. Tsutso said, shocking Adaphid from his mental haze and back into reality.
14	“R-Right,” grumbled the cat. He felt the heat rush back to his cheeks.
15	By the time Adaphid had read each of the contracts he was required to digitally sign, signed them, and filled out each of the countless forms required both of him and of his corporation, it was just passed before noon. His eyes drooped heavily lidded and his breaths came ragged and mindless, as if he had completed a marathon. With a simple smile from somewhere deep within himself, Adaphid pressed what he could only gather was the final submit button. When nothing happened, he pressed it again. And again. Three times, before he forced himself to hold back tears. He didn’t read the appearing dialogue box, for he lacked the strength to do so.
16	“Thank you for your application, Mr. Raenkth,” said the vixen next to him. Did she stand watch for him this whole time? He looked at her, and she looked at him, expressing a smile that to him held a hint of… pity? Empathy? “The system has received it and we will be processing it as soon as possible.”
17	He blinked twice and turned his head back to the kiosk. The dialogue box which had grayed out the submit option read, “Thank you for your time! The Albatross Corporation looks forward to working with you soon, Mr. Raenkth, Adaphid. 
18	Adaphid smiled. “So that’s it? My application is finished?”
19	“It is, Mr. Raenkth,” Ms. Tsutso replied, still grinning. “Can I help you with anything else?” 
20	“What time is it?”
21	“Just past noon, sir.”
22	“Lunchtime, then.”
23	Adaphid stood up, letting his knees and his back and his arms, and virtually every joint in his now addled body pop in painful relief with a groan. He stood up and placed his hands at the small of his back and leaned his torso away from the kiosk, eliciting another cacophony of sounds from deep within his muscles and bones. “Don’t you have a break?” 
24	“Are you asking me on a date, Mr. Raenkth?” Ms. Tsutso mewled. Everything she said lingered on some facet of sultriness, like everything was meant to be teasing. 
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27	In addition to the manufacturing of spacefaring components and the developing of technology for such devices, the Albatross Corporation had begun recently a foray into the businesses of pharmacological research and development, specifically in the area of supplemental drugs. Mr. Beakwood delivered his plans as more of a thetical statement than a proposition in the boardroom in the Trinian Market Conference House, surrounded by his competitors. It was tradition for competing companies to send representatives to the meeting as a begrudging show of good faith and amiability, to show a grumbling acceptance of the nature of capitalistic competition. The practice served two purposes, the first of which to allow the companies not at the head of the table for that particular meeting to get a confirmation of the head's intentions, so they might adjust in the coming times. Secondarily, and more importantly, it was an opportunity for the trailblazing corporation to gloat about its new and improved processes and to grind the faces of the others into the table for not considering it sooner.
28	At this particular event, however, Mr. Beakwood employed a third strategy. 
29	Needing no investors, as his company possessed virtually any required magnitude of funds, it was announced by the CEO himself, rather than a charismatic representative. It was the first time in several months that any person outside of the higher-ups stationed in the Albatross Corporation Building laid eyes on Mr. Beakwood. The towering beast of a man, standing no less than seven feet tall had arrived nearly an hour early to set up his presentation. This was typical of individuals working for the Albatross Corporation for they were often the most prepared and the most handsomely paid for their time and talents. 
30	Controversial, then, for Mr. Beakwood to make an appearance of his own. His advisers pleaded with him to allow a different person, someone less essential to the running of a megacorporation than the CEO himself, but Mr. Beakwood insisted. 
31	Some distance away, no more than a thirty minute walk through the crowded and winding streets of Styrket’s market district, gazed a man of robust build at the structure. His antlers were trimmed down to a manageable size, a process which had left the tops of their recently made points bereft of their natural velvet. His head was bare other than the natural short fur of deer and elk kind, as the heads of every man of his species was, and his eyes held the faded green hue of willow. The deer man wore a simple shirt, obscured by a logo-less hoodie and around his waist squeezed loose fitting sweatpants. With a sigh, he rotated out of the doorway and shut its swinging door behind him.
32	He took at seat near a window, in a well-dressed booth and rested his head on his hand, continuing to look at the Trinian Market Conference House. Across from him sat another man—a bookish looking fellow of porcine anatomy, who, much like his lunch partner did his antlers, had filed his tusks down to a more reasonable size.
33	“Anxious, Pae?” grumbled the boar, lifting his mug of coffee to his lips. He drew in a long, enjoyable sniff with his pink nose at the sensation of the drink’s steam. When the deer didn’t answer, the pig took an extended sip of the piping hot drink. The temperature didn’t affect him much, perhaps due to his age, or perhaps his taste buds had been burned away by innumerable other sips. “You didn’t have to take this one, you know.”
34	The man he called Pae sighed and blinked laboriously, as if opening his eyes again was some unbearable effort. His eyelashes were long for a man’s and he was teased about it frequently through his youth and complimented on in his young adulthood; but when he felt them brush against his finger the only thing that came to his mind was resentment.
35	“Yeah?” Pae replied at last. “Who else was going to take it?” The deer’s voice, not unlike other people of his build and nature, was sonorous and midrange. It lacked the punch or soothing quality of a deeper voice, while lacking the serenity or sass of a more feminine one. He listened to it and damned its androgyny and damned the plump-ish lips it came from when his eyes saw his reflection.
36	“No one. Maybe it shouldn’t have been taken in the first place.” The boar cleared his throat and coughed, before setting his mug down onto its plate. Several open cream packets jostled. It was novel, this diner—it boasted a primitiveness as its theme, constructing from centuries old fiction that was once contemporary. “It doesn’t matter how ambitious a contractor is.”
37	“It isn’t like Albatross hasn’t been hit before. Haven’t you done it before, Upmo? It’ll be just like that.”
38	Upmo shifted his position, realizing he’d been slouching as he prepared his drink, and took from his vest’s pocket a small device no larger than his hand. It lit up, motion activated, and the boar tacked something on the screen.
39	“How much is this client paying you?” he asked, looking at the device.
40	“A lot,” replied Pae as he too adjusted his slumped posture. “Even after the org takes its cut.”
41	“How much is ‘a lot?’”
42	The deer sighed. “Seventy. Sixty after the cut.”
43	The boar chuckled and coughed again. “Quite the bounty, isn’t it? Who the hell has that kind of cash to throw around?”
44	Pae didn’t reply.
45	“Listen, Pae,” Upmo said, placing the device on the table and spinning it around so the deer might see its contents, “I’m not trying to scare you. You’re a great man and an even better Runner, probably better than I was before I sequestered myself into a recluse. But I always dealt exclusively in cyber attacks—I did it remotely, and even with all of the proxies and preventatives I had at my disposal, I only managed to complete the job on Albatross by the skin of my tusks, and it was just to knock down one of their servers. You’re dealing with physical property, with actual documents.”
46	“That is my specialty, yes,” Pae chimed in monotone.
47	The elder man continued rambling, not hearing Pae’s quiet remark. “Do you even know where these things are? These—These files, I mean!”
48	“If Beakwood’s anything like any other fat cat, they’ll be in his study.” The excitable boar, as kindly and bookish as he was, had a habit of flying off of his seat (events Pae always enjoyed watching and being the catalyst of them). “And if he is like any other fat cat, as I totally anticipate he will be, he’ll be wasted out of his mind after a successful announcement of his next adventure in exploiting the citizens of Tilobre.”
49	“You’re underestimating him.” The boar pushed the device forward, more insistently, then closer again. “Not every ‘fat cat’ (Upmo gestured with his fingers to create quotation marks around his words) has this kind of revenue, these kinds of resources. And the hit I did was a decade ago, Pae. Look at the charts—“
50	“I’ve already seen them, big guy,” Pae said, pushing the device back to Upmo. “I know how huge of a fish this bastard is, but syndics like him are all the same. Even when you run into them, that is, if you’re sloppy enough to get caught, they don’t know the first thing other than numbers and manipulation. ‘I’m sorry, sir! I was just looking for you! I’m Tathi K’thargololo from Krugso! Your Tilobre architecture is so befuddling!’ They eat that shit up, Upmo, they leap like pigs to a corpse! No offense, of course.”
51	“I didn’t know you could read, Pae,” Upmo joked, “Let alone any Terran language.” A familiar trope to him, this animalism of porcines, rendered by the Terrans of old before they’d met any of the Tilobrans or Hapistians. Upmo understood the informational, lingual, and cultural divide between them and people like himself. The animal races, the Terrans called them. 
52	“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Upmo,” Pae replied. “There isn’t a single thing I can think of that shouldn’t be behind some sort of secrecy.”
53	“If that’s how you think of things, how you consider your interpersonal relationships, I feel the mirage surrounding you has finally dissipated. Even with the taste of gunmetal in on your tongue—staring death, or worse, in the face—you’re the most amusingly confident man that I know. Do not let it mutate into hubris.”
54	“Geez,” Pae groaned, stuffing his hands into his sweater. He smirked at the boar before him. “You speak in riddles even more in person. How does Naelna deal with you? Can she understand a word you say, or does she just smile and nod?”
55	“Haven’t you spoken with her recently? She’s smarter than I am, by a considerable margin. That’s part of the reason I married her, Paenap. I wouldn’t expect you to be acquainted with anything slightly like that feeling. I don’t have moral qualm with your apparent polyamory, don’t mistake me. I’ve simply grown to shift my expectations of you from some bleary-eyed revolutionary to qualities more lascivious.”
56	Pae clicked his tongue in dismissal. “You don’t think I care about the Kalitrin cause? You’re so pretentious, Mo.”
57	“No. I believe that you believe,” the boar replied, grunting with effort and removing himself from the booth. He took one last sip from his nearly empty mug and, taking a napkin from a dispenser sat closely to a collection of variously flavored syrup spouts. After wiping hips nose and lips gently, he balled up the paper and put it in the now empty mug, and said, “I didn’t want our potentially last meeting to end with such bitterness, but I suppose that’s the way of things. I’ve already paid both of our bills, anyway. One last gesture of camaraderie, aye?”
58	“Must you speak with such fatal gravity!” Paenap mimicked, giving a half-hearted impression of Upmo, before dropping it quickly. He too stood up, eyeing with mild guilt his mostly untouched coffee and toast. “I didn’t even eat my things, you shouldn’t pay for me like that.”
59	“It’s too late, my boy!” Upmo adjusted his vest and grabbed the now resting device. As he delivered it back to its pocket, he snickered, then let his lips fall to a frown. The elder man adjusted his posture, so he stood his full, meager height—still a few inches shorter than Paenap. “I suppose this is goodbye, Pae,” he outstretched his hand, “It was an honor knowing such a prolific Runner, and one of such skill and vibrancy!”
60	Paenap chuckled, clasping his hand around Upmo’s, then adjusting it more carefully, for his reflex was to perform the Kalitrin handshake. One was not meant to do so in such a public place, so he shook Upmo’s hand cordially, strongly. “Don’t talk like that! It makes me think you don’t have faith in me! What was all that talk just now!”
61	“Just in case,” Upmo said, returning the handshake with a smile. “Prepare for the worst and hope for the best, or whatever the idiom is! I’m sure I’ll either see you again in person, or your face on a mugshot in the following day’s publication.”
62	“Think they’ll let me video call you guys in prison?” Pae mused, only half joking. “I bet it gets real stuffy in there. And Albatross would pursue the maximum sentence, surely.”	
63	Breaking the handshake, the boar laughed a final chortle: the low cough of a man past his prime, the low reverberations of a man who’d seen failures from the outside, but never felt their effects himself, until now. Perhaps he did think too fatalistically—nothing had even happened yet. “Now who is speaking gravely?” he remarked. 
64	A clock, analog, struck the hour and celebrated with a little tune, some old little ditty that only the most ancient people could place, or knew the name of. It was a pleasant little song that featured a pick up at the beginning and an arpeggio from the bass clef. The tones rose and fell, the small digital music box plucking at its code that it played in the same way since its birth. Light, magnified from passing through the thin diner windows, eavesdropped on the concert, never reaching close enough to be in full attendance, never letting the performer benefit from its presence. Over time, it inched closer to the clock at a snail’s pace, wanting to observe, but never be seen. Hours continued to pass, and to pass, and the device continued to repeat its symphony as punctually as its body would allow, though the light became skewed. At the luminous hill’s apex, it was no more than six inches away from the device, but the kiss of estranged lovers never happened and when night fell and the light had disappeared entirely to court a more easily reached suitor somewhere in Hapis. The clock never knew there was light at all, and continued its lonesome serenade even shrouded in cold.
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68	“Do you consider yourself much of a theorist, Mr. Adaphid?” The Albatross stood atop his tower, staring out into the city of Styrket through a digitally enhanced glass surface. He wore simple suit, tailored to fit rather suavely his barreling chest; his silver hair lied loose and undone, draping over his torso and his emerald eyes peered out from behind his glasses, covered a deep-blue cloak, which seemed to Adaphid his favorite garment. At his lips, a wildly complex digital cigarette from which he drew occasional breaths.
69	Adaphid, standing next to him, dwarfed by a margin of nearly two, wore his own suit of brown, with a striking red tie. The Siamese markings on his face did little to hide his excitement.
70	“A theorist?” he questioned, continuing to look at the city below him. “I suppose in economy, but I get the impression that you are not speaking in that arena.”
71	“Indeed, I am not.” Mr. Beakwood’s voice was low and sonorous, and reminded Adaphid of the sound of a cello’s lowest notes. He spoke again through his wolf’s jaw, “No, I am speaking of the precarious items of quantum nature.”
72	Adaphid missed a beat, trying to respond, but the Albatross continued.
73	“There are events on such a small scale that, even though the Terrans pioneered the science centuries ago, the eyes and mind struggle to view, let alone comprehend.  It is old news now, and yet it continues to boggle the brightest minds, this quantum field. Not because we do not know it exists, but because we do not know how?”
74	“I suppose,” Adaphid replied, taking a sip from his glass, “there are simply things one cannot understand. Ambition is a powerful tool, but an incredibly dangerous one as well. As much as we know the universe, perhaps can we know its microcosms.”
75	Zephkar Beakwood did not speak for some time, continuing to look over the tops of Styrket’s buildings, like a child over a jigsaw puzzle. The room was quiet, save for the brief and distant sound of mechanical whirring behind them as a housekeeper vacuumed the floor. The Albatross breathed through the cigarette a final time before pocketing it. 
76	“I am speaking of the notion of particle superposition, to dissolve confusion,” he said at last. “The phenomenon wherein, for an instant, a subatomic particle can exist in two positions in space at the same position in time.” The wolf turned around, eyes down at the glimmering black floor—reinforced obsidian.  
77	The cat from Githlikth did the same, but instead stared across the room, It was a long stretch of black and silver and blue colors, with its pillars giving the impression of a throne room at the head of which they stood. “Do go on, sir,” Adaphid intoned, “I’m interested to hear your opinions on the topic.”
78	A moment passed.
79	“If we could harness something like that,” the wolfish and tall Albatross replied, straightening himself, “instantaneous transportation would be in our grasp. The wolf undid his suit’s buttons and shrugged it off after setting aside his cloak. Beneath the suit’s shirt was a simple white undershirt, glanced by Adaphid only a moment before the Albatross put his cloak back on. “Indeed, we are on the precipice of something great.” He turned around, back at the city. “It’s begun snowing.”
80	Adaphid followed him, watching the wolf bring the hood of his cloak up and over his head. A slight flash of blue electricity sparkled around his head.
81	“Indeed it has,” the cat remarked.
82	The wall of glass, in a swish of light, became populated with digital imagery. Windows of various applications flashed in and out of existence, swiped to the sides of the pane through an invisible force. Adaphid looked on in awe.
83	“Don’t have these in Githlikth, my friend?”
84	It took three seconds for the now agape lips of the little cat to respond. “I-I… No! This is incredible!”
85	The Albatross chuckled and amused, patting Adaphid’s head, who felt a tingle of static on his fur. “That’s a shame, I would have figured you did.” 
86	“How do you figure that, Mr. Beakwood?!” the cat became somewhat unhinged, allowing an excitement to boil through him, “This is a feat! A feat of incredible engineering! Did you design this yourself?!”
87	The wolf smirked and said, “I did. One has time to craft any number of toys when his company runs itself.” A window appeared, large, though not taking up the entire glass pane. “It is, surprising, though, that you and your associates have not crafted something similar.”
88	Adaphid, with a wildly amused smile on his face, watched the appearing window generate an intermittently flashing text, not really reading it.
89	“I would have figured this would be child’s play, considering you appear to have already conquered quantum superposition.”
90	“Excuse me, sir?” the cat said, looking up at wolf, before turning back to the window. The text flashed continuously, but at last he could read it: CONTACTING: ADAPHID RAENKTH. A unique dread dawned on the cats face.
91	A flash of light proceeded a sharp pain in his ears as he went blind, ringing accompanied by a slight buzzing in his right ear. When he recovered, the man looked at the screen, whimpering softly, and saw two screens. The one he noticed first contained a lithe Siamese cat man, smiling over a cup of coffee, his glasses down at the tip of his nose. He sat at a desk on which was a delicately crafted paperweight which read, “Mr. Raenkth, Adaphid.”
92	“Zephkar, my friend!” the man in the screen cried with amicable jubilance, “I was not expecting a call this early in the day! How do you fare!”
93	Smiling, the wolfman responded, “I am well, Adaphid! I hope I am not interrupting anything important!”
94	“Not at all, Zeph, not at all! I was just finishing my afternoon coffee! Indeed, I was expecting something to go wrong this afternoon, not a call from a dear friend!”
95	On the second screen stood a feed of what the cat was seeing. There stood Zephkar, his cloak’s hood now down, smiling with a tooth grin, and next to him, Paenap the deer, standing up in pain from his disguise device malfunction.
96	“Oh, you have company!” Adaphid tuned happily, “Quite a looker, he is too! What’s the occasion?”
97	“Just a new friend,” the Albatross responded, confident and unwavering. “I’m showing him around the place and giving him an example of the technology here.”
98	“Wonderful! If only I were not at my desk, I could show him around my penthouse as well!"
99	Paenap, at last stood up, stammering in disbelief at the situation as much his electrified physicality would allow him. He reached up for his ears and felt where once stood the attentive false cat ears of Adaphid Raenkth now was his own, low and frightened.
100	“I’m afraid I must be going, though!” Pae heard the Albatross say through his haze, “I do have a guest. Perhaps we will chat later tonight!”
101	“Perhaps we shall, my good fellow! ‘till then!” replied the voice, now behind Pae, now trying to move though his muscles were robbed of any celerity. He heard a digital click, the video feed ending, and a large hand placed on his shoulder. It was warm, and bigger than his head. He whimpered.
102	“I did not mean to harm you so,” cooed Zephkar Beakwood, leaning into what he could gather was Paenap’s working ear. The voice’s tone was mocking. “I simply wanted to know who I would be having as my guest tonight.”
103	The tower of a man, still cloaked and smiling scooped Paenap into his arms with ease, as if the rather build stag weighed no more than a feather. Through his glittering fog of vision, Pae could only make out that he was being carried in the princess carry, his head resting heavy against the Albatross’s chest. Paenap blinked several times, seeing only the wolf’s toothy grin before falling into a deep sleep.
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106	It was with resistance that the deer woke up, feeling the luscious sheets surrounding him. Satin?  he groggily thought. He rolled over and sniffled a little. The gentle fabrics tickled his nose, and when he itched at the top of it, he noticed that his ear didn’t hurt anymore. Pae had dreamed during his sleep of loud clanging sounds and thunder which he now figured was his asleep mind’s way of rationalizing the pain. 
107	He was hiding beneath a table in a child’s room. As unfamiliar as the room was to him, his dream self didn’t care. In fact, he didn’t care about anything other than the whipping storm outside. A softer roll of thunder echoed throughout the room, sending the ground and the table into tremors. Paenap whimpered, a sound that surprised even him. He felt suddenly very diminutive, like the table above him was stretching out inexorably into ever expanding space. It reminded him of a pool; he was just as alone as he would be sinking into a pool’s depths, lacking air, lacking time. The thunder rumbled again, but this time he made out a few words.
108	“Paenap,” groaned the sky, accented by a flash of lightning, “Paenap, it’s time for breakfast.”
109	The deer’s eyes fluttered open and were summarily met with the slightly illuminated pink of the pillows his head rested on. Soft, he thought. After several flutters of the eyelids to banish away the, “morning gunk,” he could at last see where he was. It was a simple room, by Styrketan standards, though a number of mirrors and tapestries led the mind to conjure a master bedroom. No lights endemic to the room were on, so it was still dark, with the only visible glow originating from outside of the room. Even then, Pae thought, the light was dim. It took a significant effort of willpower to prevent himself from allowing himself back to sleep immediately, for while he could tell he was mostly naked, a very gentle undergarment clutched gently at his hips and thighs. It inspired comfort, along with the rest of the absurdly comfortable bed.
110	Paenap was surprised by the sound that left him as he turned again, trying to face the light. It was a soft and subdued peep, which he thought didn’t sound like his voice. He exhaled and let himself sink back into the gentle caress of his sudden bed. He heard the thunder again, manifesting as a voice this time. 
111	“He’s still asleep,” it said, low and feminine, “so I suggest I bring him his food on a thermos plate.”
112	“I suppose I over did it,” said another voice—familiar, even though the slight distortion of digital communication. It chuckled a little. “I think that’s the best approach. Thank you very much, Mai’ye. If you could, please keep an eye on him. Or let someone else do so.”
113	The feminine voice giggled. He recognized it, now, but could only place the species of its speaker.
114	“I was confused as to why you took such an interest in this man,” the vixen purred, “You haven’t done anything like this for some time; and as far as I know, never for a Runner that targeted you.”
115	“What can I say, Mai’ye? I found him curious and cute. I will admit to my moments of vanity.”
116	“For that, I guess I’m thankful. Humility is always a valuable quality in a man, even one like you.”
117	“Doth thou tease me, Mai’ye Tsutso? And during a time of generosity! I’m afraid I cannot tend to you as I’d like.”
118	Ms. Tsuso’s voice erupted into a giggling higher than what Paenap would have expected. 
119	“Don’t you know that’s my plan, Zeph? I will keep an eye on him. Have your technicians dug up anything on him?”
120	Paenap clenched his teeth and felt a dread rise into his chest. He opened his eyes at last, finally, to see the familiar buxom vixen standing with her back to him just outside of the doorway, her face illuminated by the glow of a handheld device. She wore little more than a pink chemise and what he imagined was a matching thong. Paenap blinked and felt something wash over him. He opened his eyes to find that he was flat on his back again. 
121	Finally, laboriously, Paenap’s body allowed himself to sit up. The setting remained the same as it was a moment ago, though he felt something which resisted interpretation was off. His nose twitched as it found the smell of something; something warm. The deer could finally see, and saw did he that he was in a luscious pink bed of carefully crafted sheets, surrounded by a familiar black glass around him. He found, first with his nose, the plate of food situated atop the table next to his sleeping place. This made him salivate fiercely and so he sated it all at once by effectively shoveling the delectable into hungry maw. Paenap laughed at himself as he finished it with a gentle burp, because he still didn’t know what was on the plate, for he ate so quickly that whatever taste it had eluded him. Paenap sighed a sigh of comfortable satisfaction and lied with his back against the reinforced wood of the bed’s frame.
122	 It took him a moment, as he sat in the torpor of gluttony, to realize his situation. With a start, he sat back up. The blood left his face and phantom needles tore through his skin. He slid himself out of the bed with subdued alacrity, feeling his thighs rub together briefly. Paenap looked down and found his package carefully situated, sheath and all, in an admittedly cute pair of panties, specially made to hold the pieces of male anatomy. Pink, he said with bemused disgust.