I had a choice to make. I was doing well so far, but storming an entire building full of drugged-up idiots? All it would take was one lucky shot, and I'd be done for.

Sure, I could just strip one of my victims of their clothes and try to pass myself off as a Zerx. But that would require being able to contemplate the idea without shuddering in revulsion. I didn't see myself getting over all that disgust and utter contempt any time soon.

"I think I have some issues," I grumbled mentally to myself and Amelia.

Taking a moment to check out my Essence, I noted it was only about a third of the way down. So, with a huff and a shrug, I once more called on Stealth and set off down the hallway.

My steps stuttered when one of the guards turned and looked right in my direction. His eyes gleamed with a neon yellow color. A moment later, though, the cybernetics passed over me with no particular reaction.

I resisted the urge to breathe a long sigh of relief as I kept creeping forward, and —

He whipped his pistol out and pointed it directly at me.

I brought my left hand up on instinct, lunging forward as I did. The bark of the gun made my ears ring in the confines of the tunnel. My hand, just about to close over the muzzle of the gun, was violently thrown to the side.

Thankfully, I still had my right hand available. My claws dug deep into his wrist, severing his hand almost completely and leaving it to hang uselessly off of a patch of skin and muscle.

His friend was clearly not as observant or so well-equipped. As I finally brought Clairvoyance to bear, every future showed him scrambling and then dying at the ends of my claws.

I followed up on that. Roughly shoving the first guard aside, I nailed his nose with my elbow, making him crumple to his knees. Then I rushed the clumsy second fellow.

I cursed as his blood sprayed all over me. My hurry and injury had forced me to draw a lot closer than I might have liked.

"Intruder! Help! Somebody he-"

I twisted around and kicked with all my strength, relishing the sound of something snapping as I treated the observant guard's head like a piece of trash I wanted out of my way. The little whimper he made only fueled my anger. I took a single step forward and then stomped on his neck as hard as I could.

For several long, tense seconds, I swallowed down gulps of air as I waited and listened. To my relief, there was no sound of commotion on the other side of the door. No screams. No rush to find out what had happened.

I was just calming down and preparing to turn my Clairvoyance off when it showed me a glimpse of the doors opening and the confused face of some random Zerx.

The warning sent me bounding forward, right hand outstretched and claws fully extended.

The rando didn't even get to say a word. I latched onto the sides of his face with my claws, thumb pressing into his chin and other fingers splaying over his cheek on the other side. Then I squeezed, feeding my claws Essence as I did.

My hand came away with clumps of flesh, skin, and other disgusting bits as the momentum of my pull sent the Zerx toppling forward. Seeing as some of those bits included his tongue, I didn't worry about him making a fuss. Still, the second he was down, I gave him the stomping treatment, too.

Clairvoyance was starting to pull uncomfortably at my mind from the strain of pushing it so hard. I hurriedly kicked the corpse out of the way of the door and pushed it shut, catching a glimpse beyond it as I did.

Apparently, the Zerx had converted the underground level of the Cattery into a storage area. Crates, barrels, and other types of packaging were all over the place in large stacks, but that was about all I could discern before the door closed.

"Fuck. Fuck! That was — I almost — Fuck!"

Amelia didn't interrupt as I lost my shit, but I could still sense her quiet disapproval somehow.

"I messed up," I finally admitted, taking a moment to lean against the door.

"He almost had you."

"I know!"

"How's your hand?"

"I… Let me check."

I flexed my left hand gingerly, wincing as pain radiated through it. Thankfully, my hand was not flesh and blood. The bullet had just bit into my palm slightly before being squished by the force of 'gun firing meets metal-esque eldritch flesh.'

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Still, as I fished it out with my claws, I couldn't help but grimace. The wound didn't look much worse than what I used to get as a kid, falling and landing palm-first on a particularly jagged piece of rock, but it smarted something fierce. More worrisome, tar was oozing out of it.

I cursed again and put the bullet away in a pocket. Then I approached the cleanest-looking Zerx I could find, which happened to be the last, young-looking guy I'd killed, and quickly ripped his t-shirt into strips to bind around my hand.

I couldn't risk leaving any evidence of the fact that I wasn't exactly normal. And while tar would likely be dismissed as some kind of dirt… Well. If Amelia's daddy dearest was in any way involved with the Zerx, I couldn't afford to take any chances.

"I'll be fine. This will heal up on its own," I assured her, flexing my fingers again. The pain was still present, but it was actually fading slowly. The benefits of rocking weird pseudo flesh, I supposed.

"Unless you make another stumble. Now, I'm not going to tell you how to do your job. However… maybe try to find some kind of a disguise? You're getting a little too bloody, Adrian."

I scowled. Not at Amelia, but at myself.

She was right, of course. Even before getting full-frontal spray from the clumsy idiot, I hadn't exactly been clean. Tearing people's throats out wasn't something you could do with no consequences to your clothes. The wounds, as I'd found before, were… messy.

The funny thing was, the blood hadn't bothered me right up until that moment. I'd discarded it as easily as the corpses I'd left behind, with no particular feeling attached to it.

A quick bout of conflicting emotions and thoughts rushed through my head, almost making me dizzy, before I decided I wasn't going to overthink shit right at that moment.

"Fair point. Let's see here…"

I engaged Clairvoyance again before cracking the door open just the slightest bit. The skill synergized with the quality of my eyesight to let me scan the space in less than a second, my tense posture relaxing when I failed to spot anyone.

I followed things up with a Ping, which quickly returned the positions of four cameras on the inside. That left me blinking in confusion.

Actually…

My eyes snapped up as I stepped back, desperately searching the space above the door. I found what I was looking for immediately, then just stared in surprise at the the blown-out and almost melted-looking camera.

"Adrian? What's wrong? Did you get spotted?"

Amelia's voice snapped me out of my churning thoughts and helped get the confused scowl off my face.

"No, and that's the problem. The Kittens kept a camera above the door. Above all the doors that led directly to the Cattery, actually. I… I guess I overlooked this one because it was busted? Or I was stupidly lucky. I don't know. Anyway, my Ping returned way too few cameras. There's only four. The Kittens had, like, three times that number on this level."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"I mean, it is… I'm just confused," I grumbled. "Are they well-equipped? Are they tech-savvy? Or are they underfunded idiots? I can't make up my mind."

Using the Ping info and my prior knowledge of the space to avoid getting detected, I plunged into the room. Seeing as all the idiots were wearing identical jackets and relatively decent outfits, I was willing to assume there was some clothing to be had in the storage mess all around me.

My assumption proved true on the fourth crate I opened, the first three having been filled with a mix of ammo and baggies of drugs. The latter smelled so potent, even through the plastic, that I was having trouble breathing.

"I swear, if I get high just from breathing down here, I'm going to find a way to burn this building with all the Zerx still in it. Actually, that might not be a bad idea anyway," I groused as I reluctantly changed out of my nice, admittedly blood-soaked outfit into a set of clothes that would mark me as a Zerx.

I still felt more disgusted by that than I did by all the blood I'd had on me moments ago, but I tried not to focus on it too much. Instead, I fired off a Breach, figuring I could mix myself into the crowd of panicking Zerx if my hacking attempt alerted a runner.

To my relief, no such thing happened. The camera security crumbled in moments. I took over easily and sent my feelers up into the rest of the building, spreading from camera to camera like a plague.

Immediately, that same scowl of confusion reappeared on my face.

The number of cameras, internal and external, was ridiculously low.

I spoofed the feed of those on my level to loop and keep me out of sight. Then I looked around the room I was in, setting my eyes on a position where I knew a camera had once provided security to Kittens. Sure enough, I spotted a half-melted mess.

Dragging a crate over, I clambered onto it and let my claws extend. With a little bit of Essence, they cut right through the material of the wall, letting me uncover the cabling hidden within. What I saw only confused me more.

It was melted. All of it. Scorch marks still lingered on the inside of the tubes that had once protected the cabling, but there were actually very few of those.

It was like the cabling had been flash-fried instead of subjected to a real fire.

With that in mind, I tracked down the working cameras. Only then did I realize they were fresh installs. All of them were wireless and relied on batteries to function, having been simply screwed into the walls instead of properly installed.

A quick trip down memory lane revealed another inconsistency. The tunnel I'd walked through, and all other such entrances to the Cattery, had once been brightly lit. I'd put it down to a lack of maintenance, but… honestly? I was starting to feel more and more like I was standing in the corpse of some massive beast, rather than the familiar Kittens HQ.

Even a glance at the lights currently illuminating the room revealed they were new, all freshly screwed into the ceiling. A Ping followed by a Breach let me know the lights were also wireless, controlled by some central hub I still hadn't managed to find or hack my way into.

"Well… okay, then. The whole building's fried," I muttered. "Could you maybe track down Mela? I hate making her dredge up memories of that day, but… I need to know if this is something that happened when Mak attacked the Cattery, or something that happened after."

"Sure, on it. Maybe she'll be interested in watching what you get up to."

I winced a little. I hadn't even offered the option out of worry that the feed would upset the former ganger, but it wasn't like I could stop Amelia at that point. Not when we needed the info only Mela had.

In the meantime, I had some more sneaking to do.

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