"Fourty thousand credits? A week? That's quadruple my rent!"

Mrs. Blavatsky frowned and shrugged.

"You'll be able to afford it. I'm happy to take fifty percent now and the balance after delivery. The ten percent fee would still be assayed against the full balance of the transaction of course."

"I just thought that..."

"Michael, I’m not sure if you fully understand what you've done here. I need to upgrade my security systems. DynCorp will be looking for their missing units, and quickly. Their reputation is involved, not to mention deposits, penalty clauses, and who knows what else. I've already seen an increase in monitoring probes, and if their eyes fall on this building it will take all I've got not to get blown over by their assets."

He couldn't deny it was likely. In fact it was probably... no it was definitely foolish to have just kept them at his place, within spitting distance of where they went missing. The catgirls had worked some kind of magic on him and he hadn't been thinking straight.

"I'm sorry, Maria. I'll start putting out some feelers right away."

"That's not the worst of it," she said. "They removed the transport last night, but DynCorp is keeping this quiet for now. They won't alert the police about their missing catgirls. With the proper upgrades, I can probably hold them off and make the building look uninteresting. It's more or less what I do now anyway, but with a few additional layers of security and spoofing."

"What's the worst of it?" he said.

He was a little afraid to hear. He'd left the girls happily set up in the apartment around noon. Reema was already getting used to the immersion interface - they were still forbidden to activate their networking of course - but she'd started her catgirl research for him right away. Meela had been busy poking through the supplies in the kitchen and had presented him a list of things to buy at the grocery, including actual vegetables. Seema, on the other hand, was already flaked out on the couch and flipping through the entertainment services. She was in some ways the most catlike of them, and seemed prepared to lie around in splendour all day long.

"Don't worry master," Meela had whispered to him, "I will make sure she puts in some work for you today too."

He had been feeling far too nice from the night before, and from that morning, to worry about it. But if Meela was willing to be catgirl wrangler for him that was fine. It was one less thing to worry about. Overall though, it had been really good morning. Better than he could remember for a long time.

Maria Blavatsky gave him a frown.

"You have a tiger by the tail, Michael. You need to see about finding a buyer and you need to do it fast. And work out your fallback position, too."

"Already thought about it," he said. "I'm going to do some scans of the ports I can access when I get home. Once I get a look inside I'll have an idea of how to rip their software. Three catgirl nets? That's bound to..."

"That's not what I mean. You need to move them out, and even one week is far too long at this point. Where do you plan to store them until you can shift them?"

He paused.

"I don't know."

"Think about it. They can’t stay here any longer than it takes to arrange storage. It’s too close to where they were lost. Ideally find somewhere far away for them, and start looking today. You need to move them fast," she repeated. "DynCorp will eventually have to fess up that they've lost three catgirls. Right now they're banking that a looter grabbed them, and that they will be easy to track down. But if they can't, then they'll have to assume a worst case scenario. In which case, the Feds are coming in."

"Federal law enforcement is tougher but I've..."

"No Michael. It will be intel, and probably some military as well."

Mike gawked at her. He'd never imagined it could go to that level.

"For catgirls?"

She sighed.

"There are internationally controlled technologies involved. Not even every rich bastard in the solar system can get his hands on one of them. Every catgirl is individually registered, and the owner subject to a lot of scrutiny before production. Shit will hit the fan."

"Does that mean they might still be able to access the girls remotely?"

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

She shook her head.

"Not once they're activated. They're a luxury product and nobody would voluntarily purchase a spy AI to live in their homes. There are multiple verification layers involved in their allegiance to their masters. In fact that's one of the things that reduces the risk enough to allow their sale. But of course the corp will be hoping that they're not activated."

Mike was surprised.

"So you know about that? About how... completely they imprint on their master?"

Maria grimaced.

"Just don't get any ideas about finding a rich playboy to buy those girls. They're already ruined from that standpoint."

He threw up his hands.

"So I'm already fucked! That's what I was afraid of."

"Dear, I'm trying to give you some useful advice here, if you'd listen" she said, and sipped from her tea cup.

"Wait, who would be the buyer then?"

She gave him a sardonic look.

"Based on what I've told you, I think you can already guess that. In fact once word gets out you'll probably have quite a few interested parties. That's another reason I'm worried about security upgrades."

He flopped back in his chair.

"Fucking hell. You mean the Belt government? Mars? Europa?"

She nodded. "Even the Oort colonies, maybe."

He burst out laughing.

"All I did was grab the best items I saw! There was a whole row of datasets there, I could have moved those by the weekend."

Another question popped into his head.

"What do you think they'd do with the girls?"

She put her teacup down with a clink.

"They're hardware, Michael. Never forget that. Very valuable hardware."

She stood up and carried their empty cups over to the kitchen.

"Of course I'll be your eyes on the building. I can guarantee you I'll keep the shades up, and we'll look clean. Your end needs to be finding somewhere safe for them that isn't here. Once it's time to transfer the hardware we'll work on a plan. I have some old friends I can touch base with, though they won't work for free of course."

He snorted another laugh and buried his face in his hands.

"I'd already be screwed if it wasn't for you, wouldn't I?"

She patted him on the shoulder.

"You're a competent businessman Michael, I wouldn't have trusted you otherwise. Look at it from another perspective. You're graduating to a whole new transaction level."

He went to the store in a funk. Obviously he needed to move fast. He'd already set up a meeting with Aventine for tomorrow - despite her working as his escrow broker, he knew she had much bigger business connections than him. She probably mostly kept him on from nostalgia. They'd been students together at one point, but she always had the head for personal connections and ladder-climbing that he never did. Aventine would probably at least be able to put out some feelers.

But before he started in on Meela's grocery list, he scoped out several clothing stores and bought some dresses and pairs of shoes that caught his eye. He had to eyeball the size, but was reasonably sure of his selections.

They're my catgirls for now, and they'll dress the way I want them to.

He also picked up three pairs of big sunglasses (there was no disguising their cat eyes after all), as well as some hats that weren't quite as old-fashioned as Maria's taste but which still had room for their ears. He was trying to picture them out as a group together, and looking for any obvious flaws that would make them stand out as his stolen merchandise.

Finally he gave in and picked up three wigs as well. It was a primitive approach to camouflage but it never hurt to cover all the basics. If the girls were really immune to remote access then visual cover still made sense.

Actually finding all of Meela's food requests took much longer than he expected, and ended up loading him down with four huge bags in addition to all the clothes and accessories. He normally walked home for the sake of what little exercise there was in it, but today he decided to splurge on a ride.

The driver was a bulky bald man with an Eastern European accent, and the scent of cologne was almost overpowering. At least it wasn't a long ride.

"Big load," the driver grunted at him once they were on the way.

"Got to stock up, you know how it goes."

"You have birthday coming up?"

"What's that now?"

"For the missus."

The driver jerked his head in the direction of the fancy clothing store bags.

"Oh that, right," he said. "Picking up some alterations. It was more than I expected."

"They like their clothes," the man said, and laughed loudly.

When they got to the apartment the driver pointed at the damage to the building across the street.

"Some people got pretty lucky last night," he said. "I hear a big DynCorp transport come down, and they cleaned it out really good."

"I heard the noise," Mike said, grabbing his bags as fast as he could while trying to look casual. "Lots of yelling, then police sirens. Thought I should mind my own business."

"Smart man!" the driver said and gave him a big grin as he drove off.

Mike made a point of not looking at the vehicle and just heading straight inside.

It's probably nothing, people are going to talk about it.

He wouldn't get anything done if he started getting paranoid about every conversation. But as he was waiting for the elevator something moved in the corner of his vision, and looking out into the street two DynCorp flyers were settling down to the ground. Men in dark suits got out of each car, and started walking over to the building across the street.

When his elevator dinged and the doors opened, he nearly jumped inside.