Adrian lasted perhaps another minute in Bruno's office.
Long enough for the report to finish sending.
Long enough for Bruno to explain that someone from the regional investigation team would probably want to speak to him again.
Long enough for the photograph of Adrian Voss to remain on the screen between them.
Then he stood.
His ankle objected immediately.
Not much. A dull pull beneath the support Nessa had wrapped around it that morning. Better than it had been. Not good.
Bruno looked up.
“Do you need something?”
Adrian glanced toward the door.
“Can I leave?”
Bruno was quiet for half a second.
“The office?”
“The building.”
Another pause.
Then, “Of course.”
Adrian had expected something else.
He wasn't sure what.
A warning, perhaps. A question. Some variation of Are you sure that's a good idea?
Instead Bruno closed the file on his screen.
“You're not being detained.”
“I know.”
The answer came slightly too quickly.
One of Bruno's ears shifted.
Adrian looked away.
“Bellwick isn't large,” Bruno said. “The main road runs through the center. If you stay on this side of the river, you'll have difficulty getting properly lost.”
“Encouraging.”
“Nessa would prefer you didn't walk far.”
There it was.
Adrian almost smiled.
“Also encouraging.”
Bruno reached into a drawer and removed a small grey card.
“This will get you back through the front entrance and into the accommodation corridor.”
Adrian took it.
There was no photograph. No name.
Only the CSA mark, a temporary access designation and a number.
He turned it over.
Nothing.
His entire current collection of worldly possessions had just increased substantially.
“Try not to lose it,” Bruno said.
Adrian slipped it into his pocket.
“It may be the most valuable thing I own.”
Bruno's expression changed very slightly.
Adrian regretted the joke almost immediately.
“Keep the outing short,” Bruno said instead. “If the ankle gets worse, come back.”
Adrian nodded.
Then he left.
Outside, he discovered that walking was still work.
Not difficult enough to stop him. Not anymore.
But work.
His stride was wrong.
That was the simplest way to describe it.
For thirty-eight years, his brain had known exactly how far one step carried him. It had known the length of his legs, the width of his shoulders, the position of his hips and where his weight sat above his feet.
All of those assumptions were now wrong.
His legs were shorter.
His center of balance sat somewhere unfamiliar.
His hips moved differently.
And there was an entire additional limb behind him contributing opinions.
Adrian crossed the small paved area in front of the CSA building and nearly overcorrected when he turned toward the road.
His tail moved.
His balance corrected.
He stopped.
The tail settled behind him.
Adrian looked over his shoulder at it.
“Right.”
He started walking again.
The trick, apparently, was not thinking about it.
If he simply walked, the tail moved when it needed to. Small shifts. Counterbalances. Adjustments he didn't consciously understand.
If he deliberately tried to use it, everything became worse.
Good to know.
Deeply unhelpful, but good to know.
He continued toward the center of Bellwick.
The settlement looked larger on foot than it had through the truck window, though that wasn't saying much.
There was no real urban center. Buildings followed the road in loose clusters, interrupted by gardens, workshops, narrow side streets and patches of open ground. Most were two or three stories high, with steep roofs extending far beyond their walls.
Stone or pale composite dominated the lower floors. Upper levels used dark timber or weather-resistant panels that looked like timber until he got close enough to see the embedded seams.
Solar surfaces covered parts of several roofs.
Thin arcane conductors ran beside them.
Old shape. New infrastructure.
A delivery drone passed overhead carrying a box beneath its body.
Across the road, a charging station shared space with what looked suspiciously like an old-fashioned public water trough.
Bellwick had apparently decided that history and modernity could sort out their differences themselves.
Farther out, beyond the last rows of buildings, Adrian could see one of the perimeter pylons.
It was more substantial than anything a settlement this size should have needed.
Metal, composite and embedded arcane material rose above the nearby roofs, sensor arrays angled toward the forest.
He had seen systems like it before.
Not here, obviously.
Around transport hubs. Industrial sites. Some larger residential developments near unstable zones.
Bellwick had several.
Western Rovenmark apparently took its forests seriously.
People noticed him.
Not everyone.
That would have been worse.
But enough.
A man unloading crates from a van looked twice.
Two teenage girls walking in the opposite direction glanced at his ears, then at his tail, then very deliberately looked somewhere else.
An older Aniel with short antlers gave him a brief nod.
Adrian returned it a moment too late.
A small child openly stared.
Adrian tried to ignore him.
The child continued staring.
One of Adrian's ears twitched.
The child grinned.
Adrian kept walking.
Traitorous ears.
The smell of bread reached him before he saw the bakery.
He stopped.
His stomach cramped so suddenly that for a moment he thought something was wrong.
Then it growled.
Loudly.
Adrian looked down at himself.
“Oh.”
He hadn't eaten.
Not since waking sometime around noon.
There had been the nightmare, Bruno at the door, the missing-person search, Adrian Voss staring back at him from a screen, questions, lies and the discovery that almost two weeks of his life had disappeared somewhere inside a laboratory.
Food had somehow failed to make the list.
He looked back toward the CSA building.
They had food.
He knew that.
Someone would give him something if he asked.
Probably immediately.
Adrian stared at the building for another second.
“No.”
Not yet.
He wanted distance.
Not from Bruno specifically.
Just from rooms where people asked questions he couldn't answer.
He turned toward the shops.
The bakery smelled dangerous enough that entering it without money would have been an act of self-harm, so he passed it and found a small supermarket farther down the road.
The doors opened automatically.
Warm air washed over him.
For the first time since waking in the laboratory, Adrian stepped into somewhere aggressively ordinary.
Shelves.
Shopping baskets.
Advertisements.
A bored employee restocking drinks.
A child negotiating unsuccessfully for sweets.
Soft music playing from somewhere overhead.
Adrian stood just inside the entrance.
It shouldn't have mattered.
It did.
He took a basket.
Food first.
Something he could eat immediately.
He added a wrapped sandwich, then another after looking at the first and deciding it was insultingly small.
A packet of crackers.
Fruit.
A bottle of water.
Then he hesitated near the toiletries.
His hair brushed his shoulder as he turned.
Right.
That.
Shampoo.
A brush.
Hair ties.
He picked up a packet, examined it and realized he had absolutely no idea whether tying hair around ears positioned on top of his head required some specialized knowledge.
Probably not.
Hopefully not.
He added them anyway.
A display beside the aisle advertised some entertainment program Adrian vaguely recognized. A woman with dark hair stood beneath large gold lettering, older now than she had been when he'd last seen her on anything.
LIJA SEREN RETURNS TO CALDEN STAGE
Adrian slowed.
Lija Seren.
He hadn't thought about her in years.
Jonas would have laughed himself unconscious if he knew Adrian still remembered the poster.
Sixteen years old, taped badly to the wall above his desk.
His first serious celebrity crush, if a sixteen-year-old staring at magazine photographs qualified as serious anything.
Adrian stared at the advertisement for another second.
Then kept walking.
Apparently the world had continued producing entertainment while he'd been busy becoming someone else's missing-person report.
At the checkout, the total came to 28.40.
Adrian reached toward his pocket.
His fingers touched the CSA access card.
He stopped.
The cashier waited.
Adrian checked the other pocket.
Nothing.
Of course there was nothing.
He had no wallet.
No phone.
No bank card.
No cash.
Adrian Voss had all of those things.
Somewhere.
The person standing in Bellwick with white hair, animal ears and two sandwiches had a grey plastic card that opened a door at the CSA.
The cashier looked at him.
Adrian looked at the groceries.
Then back at her.
“I don't have any money.”
She blinked.
“All right.”
“I have only just discovered this.”
That earned him the smallest hint of amusement.
“Do you want me to cancel it?”
Adrian considered whether there was some alternative answer available.
There wasn't.
“Yes.”
The sandwiches disappeared back behind the counter.
This was considerably more painful than it should have been.
“Sorry.”
“It's fine.”
It was not fine.
He left the supermarket carrying absolutely nothing.
His stomach growled again outside.
“Yeah. I know.”
Something answered him.
Adrian stopped.
A grey cat sat beside a low stone wall.
White chest.
One nicked ear.
Yellow eyes.
It stared at him.
Adrian stared back.
The cat opened its mouth.
“Mrrrow.”
Food.
Adrian's brow furrowed.
The cat continued staring.
He looked around.
Nobody appeared to have spoken.
He looked back at the cat.
“What?”
The cat's ears angled forward.
Strange.
Adrian went still.
That hadn't been a word.
Not exactly.
He had heard the sound.
A perfectly ordinary cat sound.
But underneath it—or inside it, somehow—there had been something else.
An impression so immediate his brain had translated it before he could question it.
Strange.
The cat stood.
Sniffed the air.
Its body stiffened slightly.
Wrong.
Adrian took one step closer.
The cat didn't run.
Instead it stared harder.
Cat.
A pause.
Not-cat.
Another sniff.
Fox.
Wrong.
Adrian's mouth opened.
“What the fuck?”
The cat sat down again.
Its tail wrapped neatly around its paws.
Adrian crouched.
His balance shifted automatically. His tail moved behind him.
The cat's eyes followed it.
“Mrrp.”
Strange.
“That doesn't answer the question.”
The cat blinked.
Adrian looked around again.
An elderly woman was approaching along the pavement carrying a shopping bag.
She slowed when she saw him crouched beside the wall.
Adrian pointed at the cat.
“Can you understand her?”
The woman looked at the cat.
Then at Adrian.
“No.”
The cat meowed.
Give.
Adrian stared at it.
The woman adjusted her bag.
“She just wants food.”
“You got that?”
“I've known her for nine years.”
The cat meowed again.
Give.
Adrian had nothing to give.
He spread his empty hands.
“I don't have anything.”
The cat stared at them.
Then at him.
Useless.
Adrian's eyes narrowed.
“Did she just call me useless?”
The woman looked at the cat.
Then back at him.
“No idea.”
A beat.
“She is an asshole, though.”
The laugh escaped before Adrian could stop it.
Short.
Sharp.
Real.
For a few seconds, he stood on a street in a village he'd never heard of three days ago and laughed at a cat that may or may not have insulted him.
It felt strange.
Not bad.
Just strange.
The woman continued on.
The cat remained where it was, apparently still hopeful that Adrian might spontaneously develop food.
He stood.
“Good luck.”
Food.
“Yeah.”
Adrian walked away.
Behind him came an offended yowl.
His ears turned toward it automatically.
He hated that he was beginning to recognize what they were doing.
The road grew busier nearer the center.
Not busy by Calden standards.
Nothing here was.
But there were enough vehicles that Adrian had to wait before crossing.
He heard the delivery van before he saw it.
Engine.
Tires against the road.
Something loose vibrating somewhere near the rear.
Adrian turned his head.
The van appeared around the bend several seconds later.
He frowned.
That was going to take some getting used to.
Across the road, a woman walked with a boy perhaps five or six years old.
The boy pulled ahead.
She caught the back of his jacket just before he stepped off the curb.
Adrian's body moved.
Not far.
Half a step, perhaps.
His weight shifted forward.
One foot planted.
His knees bent slightly.
By the time Adrian consciously understood what he was doing, the woman had already pulled the boy back.
Nothing happened.
The van continued past.
The boy complained.
His mother said something Adrian couldn't hear over the vehicle.
Adrian remained where he was.
Slowly, he straightened.
He looked down at his feet.
He hadn't decided to move.
There hadn't even been time to decide.
His body had simply—
Adrian frowned.
Then his ankle reminded him that standing half-crouched in the middle of a pavement was not helping it.
“Later.”
He crossed when the road was clear.
By the time the CSA building came back into view, the outing had started catching up with him.
His ankle ached.
His legs felt heavier.
His stomach was actively furious.
And walking became more difficult whenever he got tired enough to think about it.
He turned too quickly at one corner.
His balance went.
His tail snapped in the opposite direction.
His feet corrected.
Adrian stopped.
He looked back at the tail.
It swayed once.
“Show-off.”
No response.
Apparently cats were easier conversational partners.
He continued toward the CSA.
The outing had not been especially successful.
He had gone shopping and purchased nothing.
He had discovered that all of his money belonged to a missing man in Calden.
Walking remained an activity requiring considerably more concentration than seemed reasonable.
A cat had insulted him.
And somewhere along the way, his body had attempted to respond to a danger before he'd consciously recognized it.
Still.
He knew where the supermarket was now.
He knew where the bakery was.
He knew Bellwick had at least one resident asshole.
And for the first time since he'd woken in that chamber, he had gone somewhere because he had decided to.
No one had carried him.
No one had led him.
No one had told him where to go.
It wasn't much.
Adrian found that he liked it anyway.
Behind him, faint but perfectly clear even at this distance, the cat yowled again.
Food.
Adrian didn't turn around.
“Get a job.”