Owl-mask’s disciples restrain my hands and even my tail, binding it with threaded steel before dragging me down from the holofield. Then they haul me through the pillar entrance and into the enormous mirrored elevator within. Averting my eyes from the sight of my own shame, I study my masked escorts instead. Both are burly and dressed in uniforms of black leather and some slightly shimmering gray material.

Their masks are simple—gunmetal owl’s faces rendered in a few hard edges.

The one on the left catches me eying his uniform jacket and smirks.

“Bet you’d love to get your hands on something like this,” he says, his gesture encompassing much more than just the coat.

“Well, yeah. I appreciate a nice bit of outerwear as much as the next fox girl, but I imagine the stink’s permanently embedded by now.”

That earns me a set of knuckles across the face. Worth it.

“Who are you guys, anyway?” I wonder out loud, flexing the sore muscles of my jaw. “Is this some kind of crime family, or a more formal organization? A cult, maybe?”

One of them snorts and shakes his head, rolling his eyes as the puncher chuckles.

“For a fox, you’re not very clever, are you?”

“No, Not at all. In fact, I’m exceedingly stupid. Far too stupid to ever escape the likes of you two. So why don’t you uncuff me, maybe? Relax. Let your guard do—”

The other owl-guy silences me with a punch.

Great, now both sides of my face hurt.

Eh, still worth it.

The elevator glides to a stop and the doors whir open.

I’m not sure what I’d expected of the interior of some bad guys’ headquarters. But it definitely wasn’t this.

My escorts yank me out into the narrow corridor beyond and I stumble deliberately to slow them. But there’s no information to be pried from the unbroken, featureless gray of this place.

A door-shaped seam in the wall to the left pulls open, and the next thing I know I’m tumbling through it. I whirl back towards it just as the exit seals itself shut a heartbeat later. There is no seam.

There’s no anything. Just a square cell of medium gray about four paces wide, its walls and floor the texture of synthetic skin, complete with tiny pores. The light is bright and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. But there’s nothing to look at—not even corners. Not even edges. The wall transitions smoothly into the floor, a gentle curve.

Worst of all, it’s totally silent. The kind of silence that resonates, that blares across my awareness. The kind of quiet that renders even the rushing of the blood in my veins glaringly loud. When I try to open a group channel between myself and the others, there’s no response but screeching static.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Panic sparks like a match tossed into kerosene, my blood suddenly burning hot and ice cold all at once. My claws extend, cuffed hands raising before me to scratch at the walls, a scream building in my throat.

AR System engaged. Potential Threat identified.

Custom Protocol needed.

Subject Processing and Analyzation at 78%

Once initiated, Custom Protocol cannot re-enter Processing and Analyzation mode.

Initiate Custom Protocol?

My hackles raise and I spin on the spot, breathing hard as my programming struggles to overcome my disorientation. Which way was the door again?

“Threat? What threat? Where?” I’d give anything for a threat right now.

My eyes dart from place to place, watching for the seams to reappear.

Nothing happens.

Initiate Custom Protocol?

“Fine, yes,” I growl. “Initiate Custom Protocol.” Just make something happen, damnit.

Colors burst before my eyes. My head spins, the world spins. The next thing I know I’m tumbling to my knees as a dark figure forms from thin air in front of me.

“The threat is you, genius.”

My jaw falls open as the apparition’s words sound inside my head. The same voice the AR system’s always spoken in, even the same polite intonation. But there’s a sardonic edge to it now that’s brand new and yet somehow familiar. Very familiar.

“You need to calm your dumb ass down before it gets hurt. We don’t want you ruining these nails now, do we?”

The hallucination-thing swoops forward to snatch up my hands, its initially blurry features taking on more clarity by the moment. Their short, glossy black hair frames a golden-skinned face that could just as easily be a man as it could a woman, with green eyes that sit at a sharp angle over high cheekbones.

“Good gods, your cuticles are a mess. Never mind.”

“What the hells is going on? What are you?” I hiss, snatching my hands back.

“Ah, there’s that famous wit again. Truly, it’s an honor to be stuck in a head so spacious as yours. Nice open floor-plan. Airy.”

As I hiss and sputter, the apparition settles back, their feet coming to rest on the floor as they lean against the featureless wall. As with their face, their body is sexually ambiguous in a way that’s almost distractingly hot. The swell of their chest—hidden beneath the lapels of their pristine butler’s suit—could either be very well-developed pectorals or an excellent rack. It’s somehow impossible to tell.

“I’m the Custom Protocol, Ms. Rajada. The branch of the AR System designed specifically for you. The ideal interface between yourself and the System, here to serve your needs and maximize your potential. Or at least, I would be your ideal interface, if you’d allowed the Processing and Analyzation process to complete itself. I suppose you could say I’m about seventy-eight percent ideal. For you, at least.”

At this they look up from the examination of their own gleaming nails to glare at me. I’m still too shocked by their use of my apparent surname to say anything.

“But the System seems to think you needed me now, so here we are.”

“I don’t know what for,” I spit back after a moment’s stalled-out sputtering. “Is snark supposed to get me out of this? Will the doors magically open if you quip at me hard enough?”

“Since I’ve appeared, your heart rate has slowed by sixteen percent. Your breathing has evened out. If it weren’t for me, you’d be foaming at the mouth and bashing your ahead against the wall by now.”

“I would no—“

“Oh, no need to be embarrassed. That’s what these cells were designed for.” Their eyes sweep me up and down. “Well, no need to be embarrassed about that, anyway. All black, really? What are you, a ninja?”

“Ninjas didn’t really—you know what? never mind. Fuck you. Any idea how to get out of here?”

“One of the first things you should know about me is that the only information to which I have access that you do not is my own code, and even that only because it’s stored in your brain. However, I do have the capacity to process and analyze the information we encounter in ways you are…” they pause to scoff, “hardly capable of. I can make connections between disparate points of data and draw conclusions which would never occur to you in a hundred thousand years.”

“Alright then, if you’re so brilliant, how the hells do we—I—get out of here, then?”

“You can’t.”

For a moment words fail me, and I just stare at them. But then I have to stop—blinking hard as I try to ignore how gods-damned pretty they are. The fucking nerve. If I were a cartoon character, there’d be steam pouring out of my ears right about now.

“Wow, incredible. A brilliant and extremely useful deduction. Well done and very helpful.”

“Indeed, my cognitively challenged companion. Now there’ll be no need to waste your time scratching at the walls and shrieking.”

“And what do you propose I spend my time doing, exactly?”

“I suggest you sit your ass down, shut your face up, and meditate.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. It’ll regenerate your Sai faster. When that door opens again, you’ll be more ready to face what happens next.”

“Wait…I didn’t know that. How do you know that?”

“The human elite are secure in their belief that only they can unlock their Sai abilities, and it makes their lips loose. You never paid much attention when the subject came up, but I can access memories you don’t even know you have.”

Air hisses through my clenched teeth. If it weren’t for the bulky cuffs, I’m pretty sure I’d be tearing my hair out at this point.

“Fine.”

Dropping to the ground, I curl my legs up underneath me.

“I just close my eyes and think of nothing, right?”

Again, they scoff. There’s a weird twisting in my stomach at the sound, and a moment later I realize why—it reminds me of Kirron.

It’s an answer that only raises more questions. Ones I don’t care to address right now, or possibly ever.

“We’ll start simply. Close your eyes or cast them down, and clear your mind.”

“Done.”

I’m not sure it’s possible to hear a smirk, but I’m pretty sure I do.

“Now, breathe in. Deeply, evenly. Focus on the sensation of air flowing into your body.”

Doing as I’m told, I focus on my breath…and about ten thousand other things.

“As you breathe out, do the same. Fix your attention on the sensation of the exhalation. Oh, that sounds nice.”

I open one eye to glare up at them. They clear their throat.

“Other thoughts will come to you. Let them go and continue to focus on breathing.”

“This is going to regenerate my Sai faster? Really?”

“We’ve heard tell that, at advanced stages, meditation can even expand the Sai Pool and unlock new abilities. But you’re lightyears away from that, my young, stupid Padawan.”

“Nerd.”

“It takes one to know one. Now shut up and think about breathing. I’ll pop back in on you later.”

“No wait don—“

But they’re already gone, and no amount of shouting and stamping brings them back. So I sit down and close my eyes and I focus on my damned breathing. Not because I believe it’ll do anything for my Sai, but because it’s the only thing I can do…and if I don’t do something I absolutely will lose my mind.

And I don’t care what Kirron or that asshole CP thinks. I like my mind.

After about two hours of attempting meditation—at once the most maddening and most boring thing I’ve ever tried to do—my Sai is still regenerating at a glacial pace. The CP still hasn’t made a reappearance, and I’m just about ready to start bashing my head against the wall.

Then a seam appears.

I’m on my feet in half a heartbeat. In the next the door’s pulled open, and with the fresh air pours in a scent so maddeningly delicious that my tongue darts out as if I could catch the taste of it. A scent like jasmine and peppermint and woodsmoke and salted vanilla cream all tangled up together in a glorious orgy of aroma. My mouth waters. I go moist between the legs. My bones suddenly seem to take on the consistency of a firm jelly. My knees hit the ground.

What the—?

A tall frame fills the room, a slender hourglass. My gaze follows the line of polished black boots upward, past a fitted suit and to a face that’s all contrasts. Razor-sharp cheek-bones and full, soft lips. Coldly flawless white skin and warm amber eyes.

The woman smiles and tosses back her chin-length hair, the same shade of silver as her suit.

“Stand,” she says, her voice throaty and full and casually commanding in a way that seems to reach out and wrap itself around me.

I’m standing.

When did that happen?

AR System Engaged. Potential Ally/Threat Identified. Blink-Scan initiated.

Ally/Threat Designation: The Most Captivating Woman in all the Worlds

Statistics unavailable. Scan blocked.

Custom Protocol Engaged.

My androgynous tormenter reappears, eyes already wide and staring at the newcomer. I feel my lips curl up in a lazy smile as I turn my attention back to her, too. As I breathe in the scent and sight of her. About her neck, a thin chain holds a gleaming pendant crest. A rampant cat with a mouse caught up in its claws.

Just behind her, two human-tiger hybrid guards crowd the hall, along with another whom I can’t see but recognize by smell. The jade-masked head honcho of the house.

“Follow me,” says the woman, turning away. I can’t seem to obey her orders fast enough, tripping over my own feet for real this time to do as I’m told.

Unseen and unheard by the woman, the CP follows, snatching at my shoulders with their imaginary hands.

“Get a hold of yourself, Rajada! It’s pheromones. You know it’s pheromones.”

But it doesn’t matter that I know, because whoever engineered them did way, way too good a job of it…and broke a lot of laws in the process. With each graceful stride, fresh wafts of biochemical perfume flow my way. I’m practically drowning in it, if drowning ever felt this good.

“Oh good gods, you’re drooling. You’re actually drooling,” moans the EC. “Rajada! Six. You cannot be this weak. You must feign compliance until the right moment comes for you to make your move. Did you hear me, genius? Feign!”

But that’s ridiculous. Why would I deceive this goddess, this statuesque queen? No, better I just do as she says. Why wouldn’t I, after all? Anywhere she’d take me is a place I want to go.

The EC goes on ranting, but it fades into the background easily enough as the woman leads me to the lift and out of the house, where a sleekly armored hover-carriage with tinted windows awaits. I fight for proximity to the silver woman as we leave owl-mask behind and pile in, winning a place beside her. The craft darts past pedestrians to plunge into the vertical shaft of the serpent’s open-aired core, but I barely glance at the view. All else but her becomes a meaningless blur, even the guards crammed in with us.

“You really are very susceptible, aren’t you?” Wonders the woman, looking down her narrow arch of a nose at me. “How lucky. I paid a lot for you.”

My gut clenches.

Paid for. Owned.

For half a heartbeat, I look up into her pale eyes and feel a spark of hatred.

Then I draw my next lungful of pheromone-filled air, and the spark goes out.