The next four weeks were all about hiding out. Mike went out, briefly and with as much cover as he could pull together, for a new phone, then pulled a set of credentials from his implant and got them up and running. All of his accounts were untrackable of course, so his funds were still good but he didn't dare contact anyone right away. Best to let it all sit.

I've wanted a vacation, and it looks like I just got one.

He was trapped with three beautiful catgirls who's only desire was to serve him 24/7, and they had a shiny new apartment overlooking the lake shore. It was just a shame they didn't dare open the blinds. Not that the girls seemed to care.

On the first morning he woke up in his clothes, having consumed most of the bottle the night before. He'd wanted to forget about everything, and the girls had let him get drunk until he passed out on the couch. They must have carried him in to the bedroom. Now Seema was lying naked next to him, and when he opened his eyes he found her staring intently at his face.

"Morning," he said fuzzily. "Sorry for passing out on you."

"You've been working so hard, Master," she said. "And we've been causing you trouble just by being with you. You deserve to do whatever you want to relax."

She looked unusually serious. Seema often seemed like the most hedonistic of the three, but now there was worry on her face, and her pupils were contracted to slits, which made her blue irises look huge.

He yanked an arm free of the sheets and wrapped it clumsily around her shoulder.

"Never think of yourself as trouble," he said. "That's not how I see you. I took you all out last night because I wanted you to have some fun. If we hadn't done that, who knows what would have happened at home."

She nodded and lay her head down against his shoulder.

"Reema has been figuring out how we can safely get what we need to start work," she whispered. "We will all do everything we can to help."

"I believe you," he said, and kissed her forehead. "Just don't blame yourselves. Nothing that's happening is your fault. Truly."

She shifted around and he found her hand sneaking its way down into her pants.

"I need a shower first," he said. "Then we can do that, promise."

Reema's voice spoke from the doorway.

"Would you consider a bath, master?"

He looked to see her standing in the doorway wearing a fuzzy white bathrobe. She looked worried.

"I took the liberty of starting a warm bath," she said. "I hope that pleases you."

In fact he would rather have just stood in a shower alone for a while, letting the heat suck some of the hangover out of his bones. But he wasn't in the mood to kick kittens this morning, either.

"That sounds great," he said. He got out of bed with a groan and pulled off his clothes on the way to the bathroom. He wasn't a bath person, but the huge tub in this place demanded to be made use of. Reema had laid out fluffy towels nearby. The tub was steamy and she'd found some kind of subtle scent for the water so that the whole room smelled like flowers.

He lowered himself in, and Reema took off her robe and stepped nude into the bath with him.

I think this is the first time I've been fully alone with her.

She soaped him up, and silently slid her hands all over him. He wasn't sure if it really qualified as washing, but it was phenomenally relaxing.

"I have some ideas about our network security that I want to talk about, but can we do this first?" she said.

"Yeah. Let's do this."

He grabbed her hips and pulled her up, then lowered her down again She made noise somewhere between a whimper and groan.

"Master," she whispered. The word didn't sound like submission though, it sounded like something that was hers.

When he looked up he found Seema standing naked by the sink, watching them openly. She didn't look the tiniest bit embarrassed.

"Didn't mean to leave you out, Seema," he said. "Come join us."

She smiled demurely and lowered herself in beside the two of them.

"You should take whoever pleases you," she said. Mike put one arm around her and the other around Reema's shoulders and pulled them both against him.

It didn't seem like there was any jealousy, because both of them began purring. He looked at the bath water with one eye, and it was actually rippling.

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"You two are possibly the best hangover remedy I've ever discovered," he said.

When Meela finally came in, she was the only one fully dressed, but she had a smile on her face.

"Master, when you're ready I'm hoping you'd like some breakfast."

"You've been cooking? With what?"

"I spoke with the building's system, and arranged for a small delivery of groceries to be left by our door."

"Amazing."

Meela's cooking was not to be missed, and he suddenly realized he was ravenous.

One Eggs Benedict plus orange juice, bacon, and coffee later and he was feeling astoundingly good. He'd gone from muzzy-headed and hung over to beaming in just under an hour.

"Master," said Reema. "I mentioned the network..."

Mike waved his hand.

"I trust you. Just set everything up and let me have a look over it all before you sign off on it for me, okay?"

She bowed her head at him across the breakfast table.

"Thank you master," she said. "I will try to deserve your trust."

"You will, I don't doubt it."

It took less than a week before the three of them were working on their own projects and the funds started to roll in. They worked tirelessly; Reema and Meela set up anonymous hardware deliveries at their door - always sourced in small batches from random selections of dealers all over town. The three of them put together their own stations in different parts of the condo, and after a few days Reema and Meela had a lineup of students paying for their help. Their avatars and voices were nothing like the girls of course, and they changed for every client. Mike kind of wished the students could see who they were really dealing with. It would have been fun to watch their eyes bug out.

But it was still strange to see Meela talking and laughing in perfect Tagalog, or Cantonese, or even some Belter patois. Reema stuck to the technical subjects and he could count on finding her guiding someone through calculus or network design.

I may not be taking full advantage here. Maybe I should get her to start teaching me some things.

It was a little distressing to realize they might actually be smarter than him. They were certainly more knowledgeable.

I wonder what they would think if someone could deactivate their loyalty for a while?

That was definitely a scary thought.

One night Reema came to him and settled down on the couch, looking like she wanted to talk.

"It's very strange, master," she said. "I told you I'd try to make some estimates of how many Catgirls there are, but the numbers don't really add up."

"Well it's a luxury market. They probably try to keep it quiet so they... so you all keep an aura of mystery. Exclusivity, you know."

She frowned and shook her head.

"That's not what I mean. The production is fairly clear. It's been about two dozen of us a year for ten years now."

"So round about two hundred and fifty?"

"In theory, but DynCorp's income from service contracts, associated subscriptions, repair activity, all of it really only seems to reflect somewhere around one eighty to two hundred."

"So you're saying sixty or seventy catgirls are missing?"

She shrugged and huddled up against him, hugging his arm.

"I've been going at this from a lot of angles. Collating promo pieces, society shots with catgirls visible, news reports, everything I could get my hands on. I can definitely identify about seventy of us visually now. Inferring Bayesian priors estimated based on the DynCorp numbers, I've been running statistical simulations of..."

Mike waved his hands.

"I'll get you to catch me up on stats next, promise. Keep it simple for now."

She shrugged again.

"No matter which way I look at it I can only see evidence of less than two hundred of us after being... manufactured."

"Created."

"Master?"

"I don't like the term manufactured. You don't manufacture people."

She squeezed his arm a little tighter.

"Where did the rest of us go?" she said.

"That’s a strange number for sure. We'll put that on the questions pile for now, okay?"

"Yes master."

"Don't stress about it is my point. That's an order. But next time I'm out I'll grab the hardware to take a peek inside you. It might be informative."

"Can I still be your guinea pig?"

He gave her a kiss on top of her head, right between the ears.

"You're not a guinea pig okay? You and I are working on this together."

She sighed and started purring, and the next day she seemed to be working a little more happily, even though it wasn't really in her nature to interact with so many strangers all the time.

Seema on the other hand social networked like a champ - she was much more selective about her avatar and spent hours in consultation with Meela on the optimal appearance and personality. By the time they were done setting it up she was already pulling in hundreds of connections per day talking about shows, doing summaries, and spending hours bantering with fans who really believed she loved the same things as them. It was a little bewildering to watch; her personality was much more active, engaged, and empathetic with people than he would have expected.

"You're an actress, don't sell yourself short," he said to her over another amazing breakfast near the middle of week two. "You've got a real talent for it."

"It's all for you," she said to him simply. "If that's what it takes for us to live together and be with our master, then I will tell them whatever they want to hear, and whatever it takes to get them to tell others about me."

But her ears perked up at the praise all the same.

He smiled and praised Meela for her cooking again, but part of him couldn't help wondering about the imaginary switch that turned off their loyalty programming.

Would I have deserved it? And how would they judge me, if they were able to?

He gave himself a mental slap. Keeping them busy generating some income was helpful, but ultimately it was chicken feed compared to the real business he was working on here. He was going to need to get in touch with Aventine again soon. She'd had more than enough time to put out some feelers. He needed to take the risk of making contact long enough to feel out the situation on her end.

On top of which, getting a look inside them at the security around their AI nets might give him – or more probably Reema - an idea of how to copy those. So he needed to move that along as fast as he could.

But it could wait another week, too.