"Absolutely fucking not," Dove said, waking up half naked in the snow. Her ass was numb, her teeth were chattering, and she had apparently been dressed by someone who believed hypothermia should come with a good view.
Snow had worked its way under her dress. Calling it a dress was generous, but calling it a damp napkin would have insulted napkins, which usually covered whatever someone put them over. She pulled the thin white fabric down her thighs and immediately lost the battle farther up.
Something heavy moved behind her, and Dove slapped at it before a sharp ache shot through the bottom of her spine. The enormous white tail lying across her legs twitched again. Apparently, that belonged to her.
She reached for her phone. Her hand found no pocket, no coat, and no familiar rectangle with which to call someone qualified to explain an unexpected ass attachment. Long white hair fell over her fingers. When she pushed it back, she touched a pointed, furry ear and felt the touch from both ends.
Her last memory came back badly. A horn had sounded in Cleveland, much too close, and she had looked up in time to see the front of a truck. There had been no chance to move and no useful final thought, only the stupid certainty that this could not be happening to her.
Now she was sitting in snow with somebody else’s knees. She pressed a shaking hand to her chest and felt a heartbeat that did not explain anything.
"Welcome, valued user!" a bright voice announced inside her head. "Your transfer to a compatible adult body was successful. I am Sprout, your merchant system and survival partner."
Dove stared between the frozen trees, searching for a speaker, a camera, or a person she could reasonably blame. "I need an ambulance."
"Emergency services are unavailable in your current region. Welcome to Michigan, post-collapse edition."
"Then I need pants. Let’s start with a realistic goal."
A green window appeared in front of her face. Dove swatted through it, felt nothing, and tried closing one eye. The window stayed exactly where it had been, offering shampoo for fifty Favor Coins, toothpaste for seventy-five, and winter clothing for two hundred. Her available balance was zero.
There was also clean underwear for a hundred and fifty. She had died and still could not afford decent underwear, which felt like something somebody should have mentioned before reincarnation became compulsory.
"Your arctic fox body offers several advantages," Sprout continued. "Enhanced hearing, improved balance, and considerable appeal to potential mates."
"My nipples could cut glass. Is there an advantage relevant to that?"
"Shelter is recommended. Estimated time before critical cold exposure: forty-seven minutes. Please note that environmental estimates may change."
The number spoiled the joke forming in her mouth. Dove got one foot under her, grabbed a low branch, and pulled herself upright. Pain stung through her bare soles. She nearly fell when her tail swung the wrong way, then caught herself against the trunk and stayed there until the spinning eased.
Forty-seven minutes was not forty-seven minutes she could spend arguing. She looked for a road, a roof, anything with a shape the weather had not made.
Between two trees stood a crooked metal post. Beyond it, a narrow strip of snow looked flatter than the rest. Dove pushed her hair out of her face and started toward it, keeping one hand on branches where she could reach them.
"You have an available survival quest," Sprout said. "Reach occupied shelter and receive aid. Completion reward: ten Favor Coins and one basic warming aid."
"You give me the warming thing after I find somewhere warm?"
"Our rewards encourage successful outcomes."
"Your rewards encourage a complaint to a government agency."
The voice accepted her muttered agreement with a cheerful chime. Dove stepped onto the flatter strip and found packed tracks beneath the loose snow. Somebody had been through here. The prints were too broken up for her to judge when, but they were better than walking toward whichever tree looked friendliest.
"How do I earn the coins?" she asked. "I can work. I can sort stock, clean things, deal with people who think screaming changes a price."
"Favor Coins are generated by qualifying emotional reactions from nearby high-threat adult males. Stronger reactions may produce larger awards."
Dove stopped beside a buried guardrail. "Sorry, did you say males?"
"Anger, amusement, suspicion, attraction, and other qualifying reactions all offer earning potential. You must remain close enough for an interaction to register."
"I asked for a job, not a dick-based rewards program."
"Your enthusiasm is not required."
That, at least, sounded like every job she had ever had. She kept moving, tucking her hands beneath her arms. Her tail dragged until she managed to pull it around her hip, which helped cover one leg while leaving the other to regret its choices.
"Can I earn coins selling things instead?"
"Ordinary trade provides ordinary goods. Favor Coins are a separate system currency. Selected quests also offer rewards."
"Then we’ll do the selected quests. Find me one about not freezing my ass off twice."
"Your system space also contains a replenishing healing pool," Sprout added. "Mental access requires closing your eyes. Your physical body remains exactly where you leave it."
"Then I’m not leaving it in a snowbank. Put the fancy swimming pool on hold and help me find a door."
Sprout repeated the shelter objective. Dove considered several replies, but speaking had started to cost more effort than she wanted to spend. She concentrated on the footprints and the next place she could put her foot.
A car stood half buried beside the rail. For a moment she pictured getting inside, turning the heat up, and swearing until her hands stopped shaking. Then she saw the open driver’s door and the snow piled across both front seats.
She missed the ordinary things with a force that made her throat ache. The weight of keys in a pocket, a heater that took too long to warm up, the option of buying terrible coffee because better coffee was too far away. Yesterday, she could have changed her whole evening by crossing a parking lot.
She touched the car’s door without climbing inside. The metal offered nothing, and she made herself follow the tracks past it.
They led along a low concrete wall to a dark opening beneath the road. A heavy sheet hung inside the entrance, and a faint line of light showed beneath it. Dove took three quicker steps before a shape moved in front of the light.
The man filled most of the opening. Black hair hung past broad shoulders, his coat stood open over a bare chest, and black animal ears rose through his hair. Dove stared at the ears, then at his pale human face, then at the red eyes watching her without welcome.
He was offensively handsome. Under different circumstances she might have enjoyed looking, but at present his chest was mostly interesting because it suggested the bastard knew where the heat was.
"Stop there," he said. "Keep your hands where I can see them."
Dove held them away from her body, fingers bent with cold. "I’d prefer somewhere I could feel them, but sure."
His gaze moved over her face, and something in it hardened. "Dove?"
One coin appeared beside the green balance. The tiny notice identified confusion, but Dove barely looked at it. This man knew her name. She had never seen him in her life, and she would have remembered a man who needed that much clearance above his head.
"How do you know me?"
He ignored the question. "Where have you been?"
"Cleveland. Then here. There was a truck in the middle, but I don’t recommend that part."
He watched her for a moment that lasted too long. A second coin registered as suspicion. Dove did not find either his silence or the payment reassuring.
"Who was with you?" he asked.
"Nobody. Look, I don’t know what you think happened, but I’m alone, I can’t feel my feet, and that looks like a door. We can have the weird conversation on the other side."
Wind caught her hair and plastered her dress tighter against her. His eyes dropped before returning to her face. A third coin appeared, labeled attraction, and Dove would happily have refunded it in exchange for a blanket.
"You always have a reason," he said.
She had been preparing to ask nicely again. The words stopped her, because she knew that tone from people who had decided what she was before she opened her mouth. Usually she had a counter between them and shoes on her feet.
"Fine. My reason is that I don’t want to die outside while you interview me. I can work for food or a place to sleep. I’m not asking you to adopt me."
"You think another promise will settle this?"
"I think you can say no after I’m warm enough to understand what the hell you’re talking about."
He glanced past her toward the tracks. Dove wanted to take advantage of it and edge toward the curtain, but the ground dipped strangely when she tried. She caught the concrete wall with her palm and scraped it. The pain arrived late and distant.
The man looked back at once. "How long were you outside?"
"I don’t know. Your customer survey needs fewer questions."
She meant to straighten, because she hated the idea of pleading from the ground. Instead, her knees stopped holding her. He reached her before she landed, catching her above the elbow and across the back.
For one horrible second she could not make her legs move, and the fear was too large to turn into anything funny. "I can’t stand," she told him.
"I can see that. Keep your arms in."
He lifted her, brisk and awkward around the tail, and carried her through the hanging sheet. Dove grabbed the edge of his coat because she had nothing else to hold. Warm air reached her face, smelling of damp wool and smoke, while the system quietly added five coins for alarm.
She had eight coins, no shoes, and a stranger’s arm beneath her knees. None of it felt like winning.
A guard stood just inside, brown animal ears lifting through his hair. He began to speak, saw her face, and stopped. Dove tried to focus on him while the black-haired man gave an order.
"Get Kael. Tell him she’s been exposed to the cold. Then check the approach for anyone following."
"Ash, that’s Dove," the guard said. His hand tightened around the strap across his chest. "We thought she was dead."
Dove looked up at the man carrying her, waiting for him to correct the mistake. His expression had not softened, and he was looking at her face as though it was something he needed to search.
"So did I," he said. "Keep her watched."