Chapter 15
Travis
The gray kitten was on my keyboard again.
Notnearmy keyboard. Notbesideit.On it, with all four paws planted across the keys like it had claimed the territory and was prepared to defend it. The screen behind it displayed a string of gibberish where my intercept query used to be: ffffffffjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjkkkk.
I picked Gray up. Set it on the floor. Turned back to the screen and deleted the gibberish. Started retyping the query.
Thirty seconds later, the kitten was scaling my pant leg with a determination that bordered on obsession. It hauled itself up the denim, crossed my lap, climbed onto the desk, and sat down on the escape key.
"That's the third time in twenty minutes," Maude said.
"I'm aware."
"Your cortisol actually drops when you pick one of them up. By a measurable amount. I'd recommend holdingthem for longer intervals, but I know how you feel about recommendations."
"I feel great about recommendations. I ignore them equally and without prejudice."
Five days since Lark had deposited three foster kittens into my compound like biological grenades. Five days since one of them had figured out how to wedge itself behind the server rack and bat at cables that carried data streams worth more than most vehicles.
Five days since the other two had decided that every flat surface in the compound belonged to them, including the heavy bag in the gym, which the white one had launched itself at mid-swing and attached to like a furry parasite while I was trying to work my shoulder back into rotation.
They had ruined the place. The controlled environment I'd spent three years engineering to a narrow tolerance had been invaded by three animals that weighed nothing, understood nothing, and respected absolutely nothing about my operational security.
And they'd arrived at exactly the right time.
The first two days after I'd kissed Sera had been unbearable. Polite. Careful. The kind of careful where you measure the distance between yourself and another person down to the inch and never, under any circumstances, close it. We'd moved through the compound like two people navigating a room full of invisible tripwires, speaking in complete professional sentences and avoiding eye contact that lasted longer than two seconds.
Then Lark had shown up with a box of kittens and blown through fucking all of it. You couldn't maintain rigid operational distance when something the size of a fist was climbing your pant leg during breakfast.
The kittens had given us something to talk about that wasn't the thing weweren'ttalking about.
I'd rather credit three half-pound animals for saving the dynamic than admit I didn't know how to be in the same room as Sera after I'd kissed her.
"Your heart rate just shifted," Maude said.
"Don't."
"You were calmer a moment ago. Now you're not. I wonder what changed between the kitten and this exact second."
"What changed is you started talking."
"Statistically unlikely. My voice has a negligible impact on your autonomic responses. I've tested it."
"You've tested the effect of your own voice on my nervous system?”
"Extensively. You find me mildly irritating at worst. Whatever just spiked you, it wasn't me."
I really really really really really needed to reprogram Maude.
I picked the gray kitten up off the escape key and set it on the floor again. It looked at me with an expression of absolute betrayal and began washing its paw.
Sera would have laughed at that. She'd started narrating the kittens' inner lives out loud, giving them motivations and grudges like they were characters in a novel. Gray, according to Sera, had a personal vendetta against my productivity.
She wasn't wrong.
Sera and I had continued training together even with the kittens around. Self-defense, conditioning, the basic framework I'd laid out. It was still sometimes… potent. Teaching someone to break a hold meant putting your hands on them, but we'd both gotten very good at pretending that was all it was.
