The outer walls of Cat’s Cradle are a forest—a wild one, half gone to rot, untended and untamed. A florid growth on the face of a metropolis that refuses to claim it as a district and a planet that denies its status as a city. Kirron wrinkles his nose at it looms through the gray downpour.
“Oh, don’t pretend you can smell it through the rain, you snob.”
“I can smell it just by looking at it.”
It’s the most he’s said the whole way here. I tried to ask him what he already knows about the cat-skulls, and nothing. Tried asking him about the pig and he just scoffed at me.
“I can smell you just by looking at you,” I quip. Not my best, I’ll admit. But he did smell how he looks he should…when I could smell him. Like new car and vat leather and his mistress’s expensive incense. Pretty good, actually. But I’m not about to let him think that.
He scoffs. “Good one, EC Six.”
“Thanks, Secretariat.”
“You realize I have no horse DNA whatsoever.”
“Yeah but you’re centaur-shaped. Close enough.”
The deteriorating street narrows as it squeezes through the mid-level entrance into the Cradle. Inside, it’s dark…the sunlight broken and filtered through the close-cramped levels overhead and their hanging greenery. The biolume light is scant, but the more primitive version—foxfire fungus—grows all over the place.
There’s not a lot of people out and about. Not even the usual street dwellers with their moss-spotted blankets. I’ve never been here, but I’ve heard enough about the place to expect them in droves. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Of course a bunch of humans with Signs would talk shit on the haven for those without. The catch-all, where even the hybrids who manage to earn their freedom are welcomed.
“This place is dead. Where are we getting all this supposed intel? Shall I ask a tree?”
“It’s daytime, BoJack. This is more of a nocturnal kind of place.”
“You know your dorky little insults are lost on me, right?”
“Did you just say dorky? What century are you even—“
“Newcomers.”
Someone emerges from the green shadows of a side street up ahead. A slender human man in a pine green uniform whose age is as indistinguishable as his face is generic. Which is to say, very. The most interesting things about him are the black number thirteen inked below his left eye—but all the humans here will have that—and the little metallic blob perched on his shoulder. As he approaches, it extends several stalks, and six eyes like beads of jade wink open.
“State your business.”
I wait, expecting the AR System to kick up. It doesn’t.
“What’s it to you?” Replies Kirron, hooves scuffing at the trampled moss of the walkway. The metalfiber strands of his tail twitch as if flicking away an annoying fly.
“Oh my gods, shut up,” I hiss at him through gritted teeth before reconfiguring my face into a smile and aiming it at the interloper.
“Please forgive my friend, he’s malfunctioning, and also doesn’t know fuck about shit. We are free, and so we’ve come.”
He’s silent for a moment, lips set in a grim line. Whatever the little companion biokit picks up on us, it doesn’t seem to contradict what I’ve said.
“Here to stay, or move on?”
“I’ll be moving on. My friend’s undecided.”
The Cat’s Claw narrows his bland eyes.
“Are you paying for accommodations, or turning ward?”
Alright, I might’ve been able to recognize the unofficial city’s official watchers, but I’ve never actually been here…and we’re thoroughly out of my depth now.
“I’m not—“
“We’re paying,” I cut Kirron off before he can fully and entirely screw us over.
“Right. Well, I’ve got your scans. You can go.” His gaze flickers to the Bonaparte. “Fire that weapon unprovoked, and we’ll know,” he says. He doesn’t need to elaborate, the threat is implicit. Kirron opens his mouth, so I do the one thing I can think of to throw him off the subject. I grab his hand again.
“Thank you so much, sir,” I say, drowning out whatever stupid shit’s coming out of Kirron’s face hole. “We’ll do that. And thank you for your service.” Then, throwing all my strength into it, I drag his ass away.
“Thank you for your service?” Scathes Kirron, wrenching his hand out of mine. I ignore him as I scan and analyze our surroundings, trying to figure out where exactly we should start our search.
“Let me guess,” Kirron’s deep, annoying voice sounds up again, dragging me out of galaxy-brain mode. “You have no idea what you’re doing or where we’re going.”
“I have an idea. And I might have a better one if you hadn’t interrupted me.”
“Interrupted you what? Staring around like a slack-jawed factory defect?”
“I had a client once. Human, not a thirteen…a MetalRat. Drunk as hell, loose lips. He said he used to pay his way into here from time to time. Then he’d pay even more for secrets from the AllSeer. Dirt on his political rivals. He says there’s not a thing on this planet their information network doesn’t know about. There are some secrets they won’t sell…but not many. Besides, what better place to look for information about a bunch of assholes in cat masks than a place with cat in the name?”
“And how do we access this network?”
“That was what I was trying to determine. I don’t want to ask someone, obviously. That’s just begging to be taken advantage of.” I press a finger to my lip and spin slowly on my heel. “Well, it’s the Thirteenth Lord’s spy network technically, and the AllSeer is their leader. So probably, we can find them near the Thirteenth. And everything I know about lords and leaders tells me we should start up there. At the top.”
Kirron doesn’t have a better idea, so we climb our way through sleeping, overgrown neighborhoods until all that’s left above us is the drizzling sky. But the towers I’d taken for lordly strongholds turn out to be communal living structures, the occupants as civilian and ignoble as they get, it would seem—aside from the occasional Claw with their green clothes and silvery companions.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Perhaps we should stop and ask for directions?” Suggests the centaur, sarcastically.
“If you don’t adjust your attitude, I’ll be asking directions to the glue factory.”
The hyborg’s clopping slows and he raises his eyebrows at me.
“Glue?”
“You know, because they used to…actually? Nevermind. Fuck you.” That makes him chuckle for some reason, which makes me feel kind of good. I try not to beat myself up too much for it, though.
We’ve been wandering for a while, and the Cradle is slowly waking up. People are beginning to trickle out of doors half-hidden by ferns and foxfire. My ears prick with caution as someone picks up their pace behind us. Coming to what passes for a street corner, I hang right just to see if they’ll follow. They do. I whirl on the spot.
“Ok, what the—oh,” I blink down at our stalker, lost for words.
A young woman stares up at me with enormous and entirely black eyes. She’s got long ears, a pinkish hue to her skin and hair, cheeks spattered with golden-brown freckles, and fluttering gills like petals that bloom through her locks to either side of her face. She’s also about a head shorter than me.
AR System engaged. Potential Ally identified. Blink-Scan initiated.
Designation - Tiberia
Species: Hybrid - Human, Holland Lop, Leucistic Axolotl, Cone Snail
OP Level: 69
Estimated Health: 93/95
Estimated Sai Pool: 65/70
Estimated Strength: 15
Estimated Cunning: 98
Augments -
Basic Kit
Custom Kit (Honeypot)
Custom Kit (type unknown)
Further statistics unavailable, scan length insufficient.
“Oh gods,” I wheeze, checking her OP and Sai levels twice over to make sure I comprehended them correctly.
“Yes, yes,” she says, waving a hand. “Come with me.”
“Er,” I falter for a moment as I eye that “honeypot” bit. This seems like a trap. But the system said she was a potential ally, and it was right about Kirron, after all. Well, kind of.
“Not that I wouldn’t like to, but…why?”
“You seek the AllSeer. I’ll take you to them.”
“How do you—“
“The AllSeer.”
Kirron scoffs “Too bad they didn’t manage to tell you before we went all the way—“
“Of course,” I breathe, flashing the centaur a smug smile and a shut-the-fuck-up gesture. “After you, miss”
~*~
We follow the rabbit, and she leads us—fittingly—ever downward. All the way to the Cradle’s ground level, and then further still. Into the dark, dripping, pipe-worked world below. Foxfire is the only illumination, its green glow reflecting off the even greener channel of water flowing between slimy walkways. It shouldn’t be able to grow down here, so maybe it’s not the natural kind after all.
“Well this feels like a trap,” says Kirron after a while.
“If I wanted to kill you, incapacitate you, or mug you, I’d have done it by now,” says the pink girl.
“And of course I’m just going to take your word for that,” replies Kirron.
“Good,” says the hybrid, unphased. We turn down a cramped corridor, stopping before a metal door at its very end, rust cascading down its face like crusted blood. It drags open as we approach, and both Kirron and I slow.
Ok, that does seem kind of ominous.
“You may go in,” says the rabbitmander.
“Er…” I begin, stalling for time as I angle my ears, scent the air. I hear no heartbeats coming from the room, no breath, no whirring of machinery.
“There’s no one in there,” I say, trying to hide the hurt in my voice a being betrayed by so cute a being. Fuck you, lying-ass System.
“No,” she says. “I will speak for the AllSeer today. Here, I will go in first.”
And she skirts around us, trots up to the door and swings it the rest of the way open. I’m holding my breath, expecting…I don’t know what. An ambush or imposing figure I somehow didn’t sense. Or maybe just a really cool chamber. A dark spy’s lair.
But it’s just…dirt. A big, empty, dripping space with a dirt floor that dips in at the center. It smells of rot and mulch. The girl approaches the indentation. Kirron and I glance at each other, and I know what he’s thinking. But it’s stupid to worry about another door we might get trapped behind, this far into…where ever we are. Probably stupid to be here at all, but we are, so…why not follow the cute rabbit girl into the weird dirt room?
So I do, drawn by curiosity to get a look into the dent. At first I think its lined in lace. Then my brain makes sense of the translucent layering of threads, and I recognize it for what it is. Mycelium. Kirron takes a few steps into the room, but hangs back.
Hopping into the earthen bowl, the girl lays down and closes her eyes.
“So, um…are we going to negotiate the cost or—?“
“The three of you are three of twelve,” says the girl, the cadence of her voice changing continuously even as she speaks. “Twelve created, twelve gifted, twelve freed, twelve to be drawn together. All for a purpose. One purpose. Gather the Artifacts.”
Kirron scuffs at the dirt impatiently.
“My mistress—“
“Gather the Artifacts to free them all.”
“Which Artifacts? All of who?” Now I’m the one interrupting. But the girl drones on as though she can’t hear either of us.
“Gather them, before the Nektos Noctua. Take from them those they’ve found already.”
“Where do I find the Nektos Noctua?” barks Kirron, tone demanding. “How do I get to them?”
This time, the questions register. Or perhaps what I take for an answer is just where she was headed with everything next.
“They have tasted the blood of the fox, and they know now who she is. They will come for her. “
“What?” I yelp. “Why? I don’t—“
“That’s it.” The girl opens her eyes, sitting up, speech patterns returned to normal.
“What do you mean that’s it?” Growls Kirron, hands curling into fists. “All I heard was a bunch of esoteric nonsense. I didn’t even get to ask any of my questions.”
“You asked questions.”
“You know what I meant.”
Tiberia frowns. I rub my forehead.
“We thought you knew everything here. If it’s so important for us to get these artifacts, and it really has to be us that do it…maybe you could tell us why? Or who made us this way? Or, I don’t know…where the artifacts even are, maybe? What exactly they do?”
But the girl is already shaking her head.
“We don’t know everything. Is that really what you thought? How silly.”
The fur on my ears prickles at that. “And an outhouse full of psychic mushrooms handing out useless information isn’t?”
The girl waits, adorable face expressionless, for my outburst to putter out.
“I’ll tell you this because you’re my friends now. The AllSeer does not see all. Yes, it bothers me too. But I supposed they liked how it sounds, or wanted to perpetuate the notion. We see much, but not all. Through our informants. Through the mycelium…there are threads of it all through the city. Yes, The City proper, not just here. It catches things from the people that come in contact with it. Less, out there where it’s thinner. But so, so much more here, where the ground is thick with it. It can even pick up snippets from the spirit world. The network exists on both sides, you see.”
I gape at her. I’m pretty sure Kirron is fighting not to.
“Wait…so the AllSeer is the mycelium? Or it’s you? Or the informants?”
“All of us,” she says. “Many and One. The Listeners help gather information in places where the mycelium is thin. Conduits like me help it speak. We do have a leader as well, but she’s down there,” Tiberia points at the dirt. “Merged completely. She stopped making much of any sense a long time ago, but she’s still alive…so she still holds the title.” The rabbit-girl shrugs.
“Neither of you is my friend,” says Kirron.
Tiberia’s eyes go even wider than they already are.
“All edge no point, Equus,” I grate at him.
“But each of us needs the other in order to complete this task,” she reasons. “So we are friends until it is completed.”
“Um, that word…I’m not sure it means what you think it means.”
Kirron throws me a withering look that gives me a spark of hope. Did he recognize the reference, even though I didn’t quote it perfectly? He doesn’t seem like a type to appreciate the ancient classics. Not unless someone projected them halfway up his mistress’ ass, that is.
“If this…fungus of yours wants us to complete a task, it should at least have a reason for it. A reason which it conveys clearly. One would think.”
“Maybe one would think that, but I’m not that one,” says Tiberia. “Because I know better. Fungus doesn’t reason the same way people do. It really doesn’t know everything. And I’m honestly not sure if this is its will, or the will of some powerful entity on the other side. But I suppose it’s all the same. The mycelium has its reasons for everything it shows me. In any case, the reasons don’t matter.”
Kirron’s teeth grind so hard together I’m surprised he doesn’t spit sparks.
“They don’t?”
“No,” she says, tapping her forehead. “Because it’s in here. The Mycelium, whatever might be speaking through it. Not as loud or clear as when I’m in the pit, but always, always there.”
The tapping-hand spreads out across her brow, the fingers digging into her skin. “And it won’t leave me alone until I’ve done its bidding,” she goes on, dragging the hand down her face. Her sharp little nails leave lines of flamingo-colored blood in their wake.
“And so you’re going to help me do it, just like it says…” she stares up at us—big, glassy eyes reflecting our increasingly concerned faces back at us. “Or I will kill you both.”