“He’s decided I am not going anywhere.”
She’s rewarding him for her imprisonment with scratches and pets.
“I asked him to keep you from investigating.”
“Well he did a good job.” She looks me over. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Not a scratch.” I hold out my arms and let her take a look. “Nothing odd happened while we were gone, did it?”
“There was some noise downstairs.” She scratches between Kissu’s ears. “He wouldn’t let me investigate that either. But it just sounded like something fell over.”
I don’t like that.
“Was it heavy, or light?”
She shrugs and tries to remember. “I don’t know… But I think it was metallic, or maybe wet?”
Laundry. Kissu sneezes in disgust.Water fell.
“Kissu says it was a water issue in the laundry.”
Chrys opens her mouth to say something, but can’t.
“Why is the geomech room welded shut?” Shock goes to the fire, warming his hands so he can touch her shortly. “Risk can only tell me that Kissu said to do it.”
He’s finishing it for you right now. Fixing it.
“Because Kissu told me to do it, and I trust him. He said there were ghosts and bad things. I didn’t argue.”
“Um…” Chrys says and we both look at her.
Kissu has gotten up and is huffing air out of his nose.Smells like…
He huffs more, going to Shock and pressing his muzzle right up against Shock’s stomach. Sniffing at his hands.
“What’s going on?” Shock raises his hands as Kissu circles.
Old smell. Familiar.
I shake my head, watching, waiting for some other clue to what he smells.
When Risk comes in, he gets a sniff too, but Kissu huffs, expelling the air from his nostrils again before going back to Shock.
Weld smell. No. This smell. I know.
We all wait in silence, glancing at each other until he finally sits, head twisted to the side.Why smell filloum.
“What is filloum?”
“They’re extinct.” Risk gets the look on his face that comes when he didn’t know the information before he said it.
He immediately goes to the screen, tapping in the search function and pulling up a series of pictures. “They weren’t even on this continent.”
The creature on the screen isnota cavrinskh… not really. I’ve never seen or heard of these before. But they have six legs and beaks and spines on their backs…
Filloum. Not indigenous. Altered.
Risk reads directly from the screen—for Chrys’ benefit. “A canid creature with a common ancestor to zurgles. Filloum were native to the Southern continent, concentrated near Lasiana. Development and tourism led to their extinction despite conservation efforts…”
