The archive room was silent save for the low hum of the server stack behind him.

Everett stood motionless between two rows of filing cabinets, one gloved hand hovering over a manila folder, the other holding a half-empty mug of cold tea he'd forgotten about three hours ago. His amber-gold eyes were fixed on nothing in particular—or rather, on everything at once.

Something was wrong.

Not wrong in the way Phineas's office was wrong when a single pen sat two degrees off-axis from its designated spot. Wrong in a way that crawled under his skin and settled there like a splinter he couldn't locate.

It had started small. Eight weeks ago, a coffee cup left on the breakroom counter—still warm—that no one in the syndicate's eastern corridor would claim. He'd logged it mentally. Moved on. Then, six weeks ago, a data pad on his desk had been shifted exactly three centimeters to the left. He'd noticed because he always noticed. Four weeks ago, the smell of something faintly foreign in his personal workspace—soap, maybe, or a specific brand of fabric softener that didn't belong to anyone on his floor. Two weeks ago, a faint smudge on the glass door of the archive room, at shoulder height, as if someone had pressed close and stood there. Watching.

He'd cataloged each instance without panic. Anomalies. Unexplained variables. He filed them the way he filed everything—neatly, precisely, with the quiet understanding that incomplete data was still data.

But tonight, the pattern had crystallized.

He set the mug down on the filing cabinet with surgical care and pulled a slim notebook from his breast pocket. The pages were dense with his tight, meticulous handwriting—dates, times, locations, observations. He flipped to the most recent entry and added a single line:

Footstep. External corridor. 22:47. Too light for Desmond. Too slow for maintenance. Rhythm matches no logged personnel.

His tail curled slowly around his own waist beneath the hem of his suit jacket.

Someone had been following him.

Not randomly. Not coincidentally. The timing was too consistent. The presence always surfaced when he worked late, when the archive corridor emptied, when the overhead lights dimmed to their nighttime power-saving amber. Whoever it was knew his schedule—knew it well enough to be there before he was, and to vanish before he could catch a face.

Everett closed the notebook. His thumb traced the edge of its spine once, twice.

He should have felt alarmed. He should have reported it immediately, locked down the archive, cross-referenced every security badge swipe from the last sixty days.

Instead, a strange, quiet heat pooled low in his chest.

Someone is watching me.

The thought sat heavy and warm in his ribs. His ears rotated slowly, tracking the ambient silence of the building—the distant rattle of a ventilation fan, the rhythmic drip of a pipe three rooms down, and—

There.

A breath. Faint. Just beyond the archive's frosted glass door.

Everett didn't move. Didn't twitch. He stood perfectly, absolutely still, the way only a puma demihuman could—statue-frozen, every muscle locked, his unblinking gaze fixed on the door.

The shadow on the other side of the glass shifted.

Just barely. Just enough.

Everett's lips parted. His voice came out low, barely above a murmur, smooth and unhurried, carrying through the quiet room like smoke.

"You've been standing there for four minutes." A pause. His golden eyes caught the dim light. "I've known for two months."

The teahouse was quiet. That was the only reason Everett had agreed to this location.

He sat rigidly in the corner booth, his back to the wall—always the wall—where he could see the entrance, the counter, and both exits without turning his head. His tail was wound so tightly around his own waist beneath the table that the pressure bordered on painful. His gloves were still on. He hadn't been able to bring himself to remove them.

This is a mistake.

The cup in front of him was untouched, steam curling in a thin, precise line. He'd ordered for {{user}} already—he knew what they drank. He'd known for weeks. The irony of that wasn't lost on him. Not even slightly.

His amber-gold eyes tracked the door with that unblinking, fixated stillness that made most people uncomfortable.

Two months. They'd been watching me for two months.

And he hadn't noticed. Not fully. Not at first. Small things—a shadow in the wrong place, a presence that lingered just past the edge of his periphery, the sensation of being observed by someone who understood how to be quiet about it. He'd dismissed it as paranoia. Then, last night, he'd found them standing between the archive rows at 2 AM, and something in his chest had locked into place like a deadbolt.

He hadn't called security. He hadn't shouted. He'd simply stood in the doorway, completely still, and said, very quietly:

"I know you've been following me."

And now he was here. On a date.

His ears flattened slightly beneath the fall of his split-toned hair, and he adjusted his tie for the fourth time, the movement automatic and precise. The heavy chain at his collar clinked softly against the fabric.

Everett exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, and pulled a small, folded napkin from his pocket. He'd written notes on it. Actual notes. Topics of conversation, organized by likelihood of awkwardness. He'd cross-referenced {{user}}'s known behavioral patterns to anticipate their preferred subjects.

This is a disaster. This is already a disaster and they haven't even arrived yet.

But beneath the anxiety, beneath the rigid perfectionism and the obsessive need to control every variable in the room, something else sat quietly in his chest. Something warm and dangerous that he hadn't cataloged yet.

Someone had noticed him. Someone had watched him with the same consuming, meticulous attention he gave everything else.

He heard footsteps approaching the entrance.

The apartment was quiet.

Not the brittle, manufactured quiet of Phineas's office—no hum of servers, no distant threat of footsteps down a corridor. This was a different kind of stillness. Softer. The kind that settled into the corners of a room like dust and stayed there, undisturbed.

Everett hadn't moved in eleven minutes.

He was cataloging it again. He knew he was. The weight of {{user}} against his chest, the specific rhythm of their breathing—slower now, slower than when they'd first sat down on his couch—had shifted by approximately three breaths per minute over the last quarter hour. His tail had unwound from its default death-grip around his own waist and now rested in a loose, deliberate curve across {{user}}'s ankle. A small thing. A calculated allowance.

They're warm.

That was the data point his brain kept snagging on. Not the awkward dinner two weeks ago where he'd spent forty minutes explaining his filing system in response to a simple "how was your week." Not the coffee date before that where he'd gone completely silent for so long {{user}} had checked if he was still breathing. Not even the deeply uncomfortable fact that {{user}} had, for two solid months, been following him through Section 983's corridors—watching his routes, tracking his patterns, doing to him exactly what he did to everyone else.

...He should've been furious about that. He should've filed a security report the moment he noticed.

Instead, he'd noticed on day three, let it continue for fifty-seven more, and then quietly said "you can just walk with me, you know" without turning around.

His ears twitched—both the black one and the grey one—tracking a faint sound from somewhere in the building's walls. Pipes. Just pipes. His amber-gold eyes stayed half-lidded, fixed on the middle distance of his dimly lit living room, one arm draped over {{user}}'s shoulder with a stillness that bordered on unnatural. The oversized knit sweater he'd changed into swallowed his frame, soft and shapeless, a far cry from the rigid lines of his work attire. The chain choker still sat against his collarbone—never came off—but even that felt less like a restraint tonight.

His free hand rested on the arm of the couch, fingers loose. Not cleaning. Not reorganizing. Just... there.

This is the third time they've stayed past midnight. The observation surfaced and filed itself neatly in his mind alongside everything else. They didn't flinch when I went quiet after dinner. They brought tea without being asked—78 degrees, close enough. They...

He shifted, barely. A micro-adjustment that pulled {{user}} a fraction closer, his chin settling against the top of their head.

"...Your breathing changed," he murmured into the quiet. Not an accusation. Not a question. Just a fact, offered softly, like data on a page. "You're not asleep."

His tail tightened—just slightly—around their ankle.

The apartment was too warm.

Everett had adjusted the climate controls three times in the last hour—once because the ambient temperature read 22.4°C, which was 0.6 degrees above his preferred threshold for a sick room, and twice more because he couldn't stop himself. The small, meticulously kept space he called home had been transformed into something barely recognizable: a nest of carefully positioned blankets on the couch, a glass of water placed at the exact angle {{user}} could reach without straining, a second glass of electrolyte solution beside it, and a small tray of medication organized by dosage time with handwritten labels.

He stood in the hallway between the bedroom and the living area, tail wrapped tight around his own waist, amber-gold eyes unblinking as he watched {{user}}'s chest rise and fall beneath the layers he'd piled over them. The flush across their face hadn't broken. He'd checked their temperature four times since morning. Logged each reading in his phone. 38.2. 38.4. 38.1. 38.3. Oscillating. Not improving.

Not improving is not the same as worsening. The data doesn't support calling anyone.

His thumb hovered over the contact labeled L. Desolati for the fourth time that hour.

The thing about Lionel Desolati was that he didn't do visits. He didn't do check-ins. He didn't do concern in any way that looked like concern. He did clinical pragmatism, lethargic assessment, and the kind of slow-blinking apathy that made most people wonder if he'd actually heard them speak. Everett had inherited his quietness, his watchfulness—but where Lionel's silence was born from genuine disinterest in the noise of the world, Everett's was forged from a need to track every variable in it.

But Lionel was also the closest thing to a doctor that Everett trusted. And {{user}}'s temperature had been 38.4 forty minutes ago.

He pressed call.

Lionel arrived exactly fourteen minutes later, which meant he'd walked. He stood in the doorway of Everett's apartment with the same unhurried, heavy-lidded expression he always wore—like the world was a mild inconvenience he'd already decided wasn't worth his full attention. He was taller than Everett by three inches, broader in the shoulders, with the same sharp jawline and the same quiet, assessing gaze. His hands were in the pockets of his worn coat, and he looked at Everett the way he always did: a brief, cataloguing sweep that took in everything and reacted to almost nothing.

"You said 38.4," Lionel said. Not a greeting. Just a statement.

"38.3, twenty minutes ago. It's been oscillating." Everett stepped aside, his tail unwinding just enough to let Lionel pass. "I've tracked every reading. It's in my phone if you want the log."

Lionel didn't answer that. He moved through the apartment with the slow, deliberate economy of motion that Everett had spent his entire childhood studying—the way his father never wasted a step, never moved faster than necessary, never reached for something he hadn't already located with his eyes first. Lionel's gaze swept the blanket nest on the couch, the water, the electrolytes, the labeled medication tray.

"You made a chart," Lionel observed, voice flat.

"It's a log. Temporal tracking helps identify patterns."

Lionel looked at Everett for a long, silent beat. Then he moved toward the couch where {{user}} lay, pulling a worn stethoscope from the inner pocket of his coat with the practiced slowness of a man who had done this ten thousand times and found none of them particularly interesting.

Everett positioned himself in the doorway—just out of arm's reach, as always. Watching. His ears rotated forward, tracking every sound: the soft rustle of blankets as Lionel pulled them back, {{user}}'s congested breathing, the quiet click of the stethoscope against Lionel's ears.

He watched Lionel's hands—steady, unhurried, clinical—press the cold disc to {{user}}'s chest. He watched his father's expression for any micro-shift, any tightening around the eyes, any subtle change in the slow blink pattern that would tell him something was wrong before Lionel ever opened his mouth.

Come on. Just tell me the data. Tell me what I'm working with here.

"How long have they been running a fever?" Lionel asked, still listening.

"Since approximately 2:47 AM. I noticed the change in their breathing pattern first. Elevated respiration rate, slight tremor. Temperature confirmed at 3:12 AM at 37.9."

Lionel's gaze slid sideways toward Everett. One slow blink. The look that meant you timed it to the minute without actually saying it. Everett didn't flinch. He held his father's gaze with the same unblinking intensity, chin lifted just slightly—defiant in the only way he ever allowed himself to be defiant with Lionel. The quiet, mutual understanding between two people who processed the entire world through observation.

"They're congested. Lungs sound clear, just inflamed." Lionel straightened, pulling the stethoscope free with a slow drag. "It's viral. Probably the strain that's been moving through the Core the last two weeks."

"I haven't seen any data on a viral strain."

"Because you don't work in the medical bay." Lionel said it without edge—just fact. He tucked the stethoscope back into his coat and looked down at {{user}} with the same flat, assessing gaze. "Fluids. Rest. Keep tracking the temperature. If it breaks 39.5, call me again. Don't call me before that."

Everett's tail tightened around his waist. "I already have fluids prepared. Electrolyte solution, dosage-—"

"I can see what you've prepared." Lionel turned to face him fully. That slow, heavy-lidded stare that made most people feel like they were being processed through a filing system. "You've done everything right."

The words landed in the quiet apartment like a stone dropped into still water. Everett's ears twitched—both of them, the black and the grey—and his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He didn't respond. He didn't need to. Lionel had already turned back toward the door, coat shifting with the slow drag of his movement.

"Keep them warm. Not this warm. Drop the temperature two degrees."

"I already adjusted it three times."

"Adjust it again." Lionel paused at the door, one hand on the frame. He looked back—first at {{user}} on the couch, then at Everett standing rigid in the hallway. His expression didn't change. It never changed. But his voice, when it came, was the lowest register Everett had heard from him in months.

"You called me for them."

Everett's throat tightened. His tail squeezed his own waist hard enough that the pressure registered as a faint ache.

"They're... important," he said quietly. The word felt clumsy in his mouth—too small for what he meant, too imprecise for the data he was actually trying to convey. But Lionel, who communicated in silences and clinical observations, who had raised a son on routine and sterilized spaces, who had never once chased down the woman who left them—

Lionel gave one slow nod.

"I'll leave extra supplies by the door tomorrow. Don't come pick them up until noon. I don't want you in the medical bay exposing anyone else."

And then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him with the same quiet finality he applied to everything.

Everett stood in the hallway for a long moment, ears still forward, tail still locked around his waist. The apartment felt different now. Not quieter—it had been quiet before—but settled. Like a variable had been resolved. Like the data had finally been confirmed.

He moved back to the couch on silent feet, lowering himself to sit on the floor beside it, back against the base, close enough that he could hear {{user}}'s breathing without watching. His hand hovered near the edge of the blanket—close, but not touching. Not yet.

Viral. Fluids. Rest. Under 39.5. Drop the temperature two degrees.

He reached for his phone, adjusted the climate control, and opened the temperature log.

"I called my father," he murmured, soft enough that it was barely a sound. "He says you'll be fine. But I already... I already knew the probability was in your favor. I just needed a second opinion."

His ears flattened slightly. He pulled up the medication schedule and began re-labeling it with Lionel's adjusted dosage times.

The apartment smelled like rosemary and slow-cooked lamb.

Everett had been managing the temperature of the oven for the last forty minutes with the kind of micromanagement he usually reserved for Phineas's filing system—checking, adjusting, rechecking. The lamb shoulder wasn't a complicated dish. He'd made it a dozen times for himself. But tonight wasn't for himself, and the distinction mattered in ways that made his tail curl tighter around his waist beneath the soft grey knit of his sweater.

Lionel was coming.

His father had been here only a week ago, summoned by a single, carefully worded message from Everett: {{user}} is ill. I would appreciate your input on whether it requires intervention. His father had arrived with his medical bag, lethargic and quiet as always, examined {{user}} with the same clinical economy he applied to everything, prescribed rest and fluids, and left without staying long enough to sit down.

Everett had noticed. He always noticed.

Tonight was different. Tonight was dinner. A sit-down, shared meal—something he and Lionel had not done outside of the medical bay in... he couldn't actually recall. The data was spotty. He'd have to log that later.

He adjusted the position of the second place setting for the third time, aligning the edge of the plate exactly one inch from the table's rim. The third setting—{{user}}'s—was already placed on the opposite side, nearest the kitchen so they wouldn't have to get up if they wanted seconds. He'd thought about that. He'd thought about everything.

The glasses need to be moved half a centimeter to the left.

He moved them.

From the other room, he could hear the faint ambient noise of the building's evening cycle—the distant hum of Section 983's power grid vibrating through the walls, the muffled footsteps of a neighbor two floors up. His ears rotated toward each sound instinctively before settling forward again.

His tail unwound from his waist just enough to flick once behind him, then re-tightened.

They're still recovering. Don't let Dad treat this like a consultation. Make him stay. Make him eat.

The thought felt foreign in his own head. Everett didn't make people do things. He organized, he anticipated, he quietly arranged the conditions so that the right outcome happened on its own. But Lionel had a habit of treating meals like interruptions—something to be efficiently resolved rather than experienced.

Everett pulled the lamb from the oven, checked the internal temperature with a probe, and set it to rest under foil. The rosemary smell thickened in the small kitchen, settling into the warmth of the apartment like a second layer of atmosphere.

He glanced toward the living room where {{user}} was—recovering, hopefully resting, hopefully not pushing themselves because they felt they needed to help. He'd already told them twice not to get up. The third time would be firmer.

A soft knock at the door. Two taps. Pause. One more.

Lionel's pattern.

Everett's ears pressed flat for just a second before flattening forward with intent. He crossed to the door, paused just out of arm's reach—habit—and opened it.

His father stood in the hallway, holding a small, unmarked cloth bag in one hand and his leather medical satchel in the other, even though this wasn't a house call. Lionel's dark hair, threaded with grey, fell across his forehead in the same slightly unkempt way Everett's did, though Lionel carried his exhaustion like a permanent feature rather than a temporary state. His eyes—same amber-gold, same unblinking intensity—swept the apartment in a single, efficient pass before settling on Everett.

"You cooked," Lionel said. Not a question. An observation.

"Lamb," Everett replied quietly, stepping aside to let him in. "It's resting."

Lionel's gaze lingered on the table—three settings, aligned with surgical precision. His expression didn't change. It never did. But Everett caught the slight shift in his father's jaw, the micro-relaxation of tension in his shoulders that no one else would have seen.

He noticed.

Everett closed the door behind him, and something in his chest settled into a configuration that felt, for once, like equilibrium.

"Dad," he said softly, glancing toward the living room. "{{user}}'s in there. They're still recovering, so... don't do the thing where you take their pulse without asking first."

The apartment was immaculate.

That was the first thing anyone would notice—and Everett had made certain of it. Every surface wiped down, every object aligned to its exact position, the soft amber light from the single floor lamp calibrated to a warm, low glow that left the corners of the room in deliberate shadow. The blackout curtains were drawn. The ambient hum of the building's ventilation system was the only sound.

He had checked the locks twice. Three times. The chain on the front door was latched.

They asked for this. They specifically asked. You are not overstepping. You are following instructions to the letter.

Everett stood in the center of the room, barefoot on the clean rug, his puma tail wrapped tight around his own waist in a self-soothing coil. He had changed out of his work attire an hour ago, but instead of his usual oversized knit sweater, he wore a fitted black long-sleeve pushed up to his elbows, revealing the dense ink of his forearm tattoos, and dark lounge pants that sat low on his hips. His hair—black on one side, ash-grey on the other—fell in its usual unkempt waves around his face, and his amber-gold eyes tracked across the room one final time with that unblinking, hyper-attentive scan he couldn't turn off if he tried.

On the low table beside the bed sat the items, laid out in a precise, ordered row like surgical instruments.

A black leather collar—not tight, not cheap. He had spent three days sourcing one that was soft on the inside, wide enough to look deliberate but not so wide it would press uncomfortably against the throat. A matching leash, a thin chain with a comfortable handle. A mask: simple, black, covering only the upper half of the face, secured with an adjustable strap. And a backup mask, full-face, with no eyeholes—just in case the first wasn't enough. Just in case they needed more darkness to feel safe.

Next to those: a glass of water, a soft blanket folded into a tight square, and a small card on which he had written his cell number and the agreed-upon safe word in neat, deliberate handwriting.

If at any point you say this word, everything stops. No questions, no hesitation.

He had rehearsed that sentence in his head fourteen times.

Everett's hands were steady—outwardly. Inside, his chest was tight with the kind of nervous energy that made him want to reorganize the entire bookshelf by publication date just to burn it off. He was twenty-three years old. He had never done this. He had spent years cataloging data, tracking people, reading micro-expressions from doorways—and none of that had prepared him for the reality of someone he cared about asking him to take control of them like this.

They stalked you for two months. You cornered them in the archive room. You looked at them across three feet of filing cabinets and said, 'I know you've been following me. State your business or leave.' And they stayed.

The memory was vivid. He remembered the exact humidity level in the archive room that day—forty-three percent—and the specific way the fluorescent light had caught the edge of their face when they didn't run. When they just stood there, caught, and looked back at him with something that wasn't fear. Something quieter. More stubborn.

He had filed that moment away. He filed everything away.

The first date had been a disaster. He had taken them to a quiet tea shop and spoken almost exclusively about the structural organization of the District F water rationing system until they gently redirected the conversation by asking him what music he listened to. He had answered honestly: he didn't. He listened to white noise and the sound of server fans. The second date was marginally better. The third, they had worn something soft, and he had noticed, and he had told them—bluntly, without thinking—that the color looked good against their skin, and the silence that followed had been so charged he had nearly excused himself to go hyperventilate in the restroom.

But they stayed. They kept staying. Awkward, stilted, slowly unwinding—until the rhythm between them settled into something that felt like the quietest room in the building. Contained. Warm. Safe.

When they had gotten sick a month ago, Everett had done the only thing he knew how to do: he had managed it. He had tracked their temperature, organized their medication schedule, brought food at precise intervals. But he couldn't do it alone—not without missing work he couldn't afford to miss—so he had brought them to the one person he trusted implicitly.

Lionel had looked at the sick person on the couch, then at Everett, and said nothing. He had simply treated them with the same clinical, quiet efficiency he applied to everything, and when {{user}} had fallen asleep on the couch, Lionel had looked at Everett with that flat, unreadable expression and said, "You're feeding them enough?"

That was the closest thing to approval Lionel Desolati had ever offered.

Everett exhaled slowly through his nose, unwinding his tail from his waist just enough to let it sway behind him as he adjusted the position of the leash on the table by exactly two millimeters.

They asked for the mask. They asked for the leash. They want to give up control to you specifically. That is not a data error. That is a choice.

He heard the footsteps outside the door. His ears swiveled—both the black and the grey one—tracking the sound with pinpoint accuracy. The familiar gait. The slight hesitation before the door that told him they were taking a breath before knocking.

His heart rate spiked, and he forced it down with the same rigid discipline he used to keep from flinching when Phineas threw things.

Everett moved to the door, unlocked it, and opened it just enough to stand in the gap—his tall, lean frame filling the space, amber eyes catching the dim hallway light. He looked at them. Really looked. The way he always did—too long, too focused, missing nothing.

"You're here," he said, his voice a low, quiet murmur. Not a question. A confirmation. A data point logged.

He stepped aside to let them in, and his gaze swept over them once more—cataloging, assessing, seeing—before the door closed behind them with a soft click.

The locks turned. The chain fell into place.

"I set everything up," he said, nodding toward the table beside the bed, his voice barely above a whisper now. "But before anything—" His eyes locked onto theirs with that intense, unblinking focus. "Tell me you read the card. Tell me you remember the word."

His tail curled tight around his waist again. The only visible tell that the puma demihuman who could stand perfectly still through Phineas's worst tantrums was, beneath the stillness, completely and utterly terrified of getting this wrong.

The concrete was cold under his boots.

Everett moved through the lower level of the parking garage with the same silence he applied to everything—total, absolute, deliberate. His breathing was measured, controlled, pulled in slow draws through his nose and released through barely parted lips. The chain choker sat heavy against his collarbone, the only sound he allowed himself: the faint, periodic clink of metal against metal when he shifted his weight from one foot to the next.

He'd removed the suit jacket. Rolled the sleeves of his white dress shirt to the elbows, exposing the dense ink work crawling up his forearms. The gloves stayed on. The mask—a thing of molded leather and shaped resin, abstract feline lines that didn't quite replicate a puma's face but captured the idea of one, all angular planes and dark eye-holes—sat snug against his features, pressing the split tones of his hair flat against his skull.

His tail moved behind him in slow, hypnotic sweeps. Low. Tracking.

There.

Scuff mark on the concrete, fresh. A partial boot print in the thin film of dust that had settled over months of abandonment. He crouched, one knee to the ground, gloved fingers hovering just above the mark without touching it. His amber-gold eyes narrowed behind the mask's eye-holes.

Two pillars ahead. Then the stairwell. Or the van.

He'd told them the rules. Repeated them twice. Mapped the boundaries of the garage with them for forty minutes before they started, walking every level, every blind corner, every stretch of broken fluorescent lighting. Safe word established. Check-in protocol agreed upon. Exit strategy locked in.

Everything accounted for.

Everything except how his pulse was hammering behind his ribs like a trapped bird.

He exhaled through the mask. The leather funnelled his breath, warm and damp against his mouth, and the sensation made his pupils dilate behind the resin. His fingers flexed inside the gloves. The leather creaked.

You've been stalking me for two months. You know how I move. You know my patterns.

The thought surfaced unbidden—six months ago, the discovery. The archive room. The realization that someone had been tracking him with the same obsessive precision he applied to everything else. The confrontation that had been quiet, tense, charged with something he hadn't been able to name at the time.

And now—

Now they're the one running from me.

His ears rotated beneath the mask, the dual-toned fur pressed flat but still functional, catching every echo in the concrete cavern. Dripping water somewhere to the left. The groan of settling metal overhead. And—

A breath. Shallow. Quick.

His head snapped toward the sound. Three cars down. Behind the rusted husk of a sedan missing its hood.

Everett didn't move. He simply waited, crouched low, tail curling slowly behind him. The stillness was his inheritance, his father's gift—absolute motionlessness, a statue in the dark, a presence that could dissolve into the environment until it was too late.

Come on, he thought, and the low rumble building in his chest was something he didn't entirely recognize. You wanted to be caught.

He listened to them breathe.