Meela stared at the floor of the cab, her face a mask of anguish.

"I should never have suggested we stop," she moaned. "It was stupid. I'm so sorry."

Mike grabbed her hand.

"Don't blame yourself. I said yes, and I wanted to do it. It's not on you. Maybe we got lucky."

She shook her head, and tears were running down her face.

"Lucky? How? Whoever that was, he knew who we are. Who I am! One stupid idea and I put us all at risk!"

Mike wasn't sure what to do with a traumatized catgirl, but he went with the feline angle and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her in close to him. With one eye watching the crowds zip past, he stroked her hair and told her that everything would be fine.

It wasn't necessarily true, but he was following up on her own suggestions.

"I think we're good. Honestly. That last guy gave me something, see?"

He opened his palm, revealing a folded up piece of paper.

"What do you think it is?" Meela whispered.

"Only one way to find out. I don't think it's likely to explode, whatever it is."

He pulled his other hand free and opened it up. The handwriting was blurry and scrawled, as if someone had written it in a hurry.

SRCH AREA EXPNDD MILINT NOW STAY OUT OF SITE

USE THE KEY WE CAN HELP

"So it was the same people who sent the message to your phone?" Meela said.

Mike frowned.

"Maybe trying to get us to let our guard down. They see only one of you girls with me, no point in snatching us then and there. We could be being watched. Tracked. Need to assume it at least."

Meela closed her eyes and looked like she was concentrating.

"I can't detect any unusual RF signals."

He shrugged. "Could be visual. Drone. Hell, satellite if... if the big boys are involved."

He cursed silently. It had been really stupid not to head straight home again. But there was no way he was going to tell Meela that. He was going to have to roll the dice and just take roundabout route home and then trust to luck.

Worst case scenario was he needed to plan his own personal out bug-out if things went sideways. The girls were ultimately all they really wanted.

It wasn't a happy thought, but he was just one man and the odds were starting to look ugly.

"This is outside my knowledge," Meela said. "Seema really would have been the better choice for a situation like this."

She looked deflated again.

He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Don't stress yet. If they were friendlies then we're probably clear. But lets act like they weren't just in case."

She nodded, looking only partly cheered up.

Mike changed the cab's destination. He'd thought to have it drop them off a few blocks away from home and walk the rest of the way below ground as much as possible. But now he didn't want it anywhere near their base. He told it to take them to the south end of Lincoln Park, a solid 40 minutes by foot from home if they went in a straight line. That was directly opposite his new orders to stay out of sight, but going directly back home would have been ridiculous.

Friendlies? Who the hell could be a friendly?

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Maybe Aventine's people? But that seemed far-fetched. He really couldn't imagine who there was that could be on their side.

When the cab stopped to let them out he briefly considered frying the computer. He'd had no time to spoof their appearance, but killing the car might be drawing attention more than just getting out and away as quickly as they could, so he let it drive away again unmolested. If they were under observation then it was irrelevant anyway.

They walked quickly into the park and under the trees.

Two hours later they were finally home, having taken the most circuitous route he could think of, through below-ground malls and even a few runs through closed subway lines, finally coming up again where Meela told him there was a shipping entrance onto the street close to their apartment. The girls had long since downloaded every available map of the area, and now they knew it better than just about any native ever would.

There's no getting away from it, they're nearly indispensable tools for my line of work

He would definitely miss it if they were gone.

And them, too. Might as well admit it.

When they finally shut the door behind them Seema and Reema both leapt on top of him with hardly any warning.

"Master!" Seema said. "You were gone so long!"

"We were worried," said Reema. "There was no way to get in touch with you."

"Sorry girls, really. We had a bit of a complication and had to take the long way home."

"Master?" Seema said. "Were you in danger?"

She suddenly looked fierce, like the thought of him being in any danger was enough to put her in a rage. Her tail swished back and forth and her ears had gone flat.

He went through to the living area and flopped down on the couch.

"Come. Sit with me. All of you."

I know better than to ignore Meela's advice at least.

They pounced on him instantly, and he was buried under them while they all purred contentedly. He gave them a quick rundown of their trip. Seema hissed at his story of being grabbed from behind.

"Let's never leave again," Meela whispered.

"Please take me if you do," said Seema. "It will drive me crazy if you're out there without me. I only want to protect you. It's what I'm for!"

Reema just nestled in the crook of his arm and closed her eyes, smiling.

"Girls, everything is going to be great, really," he said.

Their purring got louder, but part of him felt like a jerk for saying it all the same.

I don't know if that's true. I really don't.

He was so exhausted from the morning that he ended up falling asleep under them all. When he woke up Meela was in the kitchen cooking, and from the sound of things Reema was working again. But Seema was still curled up next to him, with her tail wrapped protectively around his waist.

After an early dinner, he pulled out one of the phones they had bought and synced it with keys in his internal gear, then ran an hour's worth of diagnostics to validate their security before he finally allowed it to connect with the world.

Connected.

It was a bit anticlimactic, but at least he felt certain that nobody was going to be tracing their location if he reached out to a few people at last.

I guess job one is see if Aventine has come up with anything.

Their mysterious friends were something that needed a lot more thought before he'd even consider making that connection. He definitely wanted to bounce it off of all three of the girls first as well. Their input was sensible and Seema likely knew more about security than he’d been crediting her with. On top of which, he had absolutely no idea what to do about it. Of course the most straightforward explanation was that it was some kind of trap. But given how slim their options were, he hated the idea of just ignoring a possible ally.

I just have no clue who that could be, or what they would want.

An option was that it was a buyer. An interested party. Someone with better, faster intel than even DynCorp. Hinting they wouldn't disassemble the girls would then be a ploy to make them the favored choice.

Someone who was expecting a transport with three catgirls on board to crash around about there and then?

That was an awful thought. What if he'd fucked with the plans of someone with government-tier money and resources? If so then he had not just one, but two major groups on his tail now. Three actually, if military intel was on him too. At least one of whom had casually walked up to them in public as if finding them wasn't even much of a challenge.

Someone who had a means of tracking them right from the start?

The odds it was actually someone friendly were pretty much slim and none. On the positive side, they could have put a bullet in his skull twice already before he'd had a clue they were there.

Which would have meant that all three valuable catgirl brains would have melted to slag very shortly afterwards.

So they needed him alive if they were going to keep the cargo intact. But the cargo was ruined now in any case. They had imprinted on some small-time operator as their master by sheer random bad luck. There was no way to reset their imprints.

Or was there?

Naturally the catgirls wouldn't think it was possible. It would be imperative that they truly believe that it could never, ever happen.

If that was the case, then Mike was useful alive for exactly as long as it took them to hit the reset button.

One way or another, his "friends" couldn't just be trusted because they had decided not to instantly eliminate him. Whichever direction this ended up going, Mike needed an agent who could ensure his own safety as part of the transaction. He needed Aventine.