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1. At the summit on top of the world.

Chapter 1.1

Heavy rail stations were never my favorite. At the thickest, these lines had six parallel rails and dozens of trains riding on each, but they didn't do much to curb the rider population that waited aimlessly at each station like poor sods at a soup kitchen, begging for a seat to ride in. Even at the death-end of the week, people packed into the stations shoulder-to-shoulder to get to an early Monday stroll downtown.

I was fortunate. I could avoid the sardine cans they repurposed as "trains" since I got to ride on the N-Freights, the royal crown jewels of the rail system. Oh sure, they were the exact same, smelly rides as the rest of them, but it was the pride that mattered. Being able to actually sit down once in every while also helped.

SX14 rolled in on time, as she always does. The paint on her hull was flaking like sunburned skin and numerous scratches and pockmarks marred her sides. She seemed quaint compared to the newer, faster, and sexier trains that ran alongside her. You know, those haughty high-maintenance numbers that were always going out of service due to loose mag-coils or crashed operating systems or some other sort of hissy fit.

As SX14 pulled up to the station, passengers began stepping forward on the platform and waited for the train to release her doors. The automated doors hissed and creaked open, spreading the train's treasures for all to abuse, but a door on the second car opened a crack and then hesitated and became shy. A would-be passenger in front of the line wiggled his hands through the crack and encouraged the door's confidence by peeling it open.

While I waited for the column of people to stream into the train, three golden triangles animated themselves on the train's digital skin, coming together and interlocking like molecules. The form would dance for a bit to catch attention and then explode before repeating all over again. On the train's fore, an identical, but stationary, emblem branded her to the owning company and forever enslaved her to shuttle corporate drones until her dying days at the scrap heap.

Tetra Chromatics Corporation. International. The train's synthesized announcement reminded us when we entered just in case we forgot. I suppose it was a necessary convention: the yellow triangles bred so unchecked in the wild that their population overwhelmed the senses and, ironically, became invisible. Take this very train, for instance. Look close and you could discover the homes of many triangles here: the maglev systems, the logic control systems, the handlebars for poor late saps, the interior lights, the safety control systems, the transparent window-displays that blocked the view outside with company propaganda and advertisements, the hardened exterior sheet panels, the exterior lights, the friendly-but-not-too-comfy seat cushions, the communications control, the power systems, the lavatory seats, and thousands of miscellaneous knick-knacks you could buy for two dollars a bag. Even the operating system probably had those triangles buried somewhere deep inside its code, a set of three-dimensional tetrahedronal glories to be unearthed by systems engineers. You could find them everywhere if you un-blinded yourself to the ubiquity of the company's geometry. The thing was, the company would rather you not see those triangles, but to instead sear it on the back wastelands of your mind like hypnotic voodoo.

Those large gilded triangles that mated majestically on SX14's head, however, signified ownership, not craft. Tetra didn't make trains.

The gentleman that sat next to me and was reading the morning news on his late-model computer tablet, the pricey kind that had the logic systems etched directly onto a substrate on the flexible screen (the exact kind of substrate Tetra manufactures in its chemicals division, as it happened). By the designer watch he wore, the guy was one of the uppity up managerial types. It had a platinum band and all sorts of exotic materials peppered its face, invisible except under squinting. A tiny triplet of golden triangles (here, made of actual gold) were important enough to replace the twelve. When your money-grubbing multinational was big enough for some hoity-toity schmuck in Sweden to design a fancy watch for you--pardon, "timepiece"--then you knew you were working for something special.

I didn't speak to him or anyone while riding to work. I just sat alongside my like-minded colleagues, watching the talking visage of our CEO on the windows. As the window-displays superimposed his head against the outside, he seemed to swallow the distant skyscrapers with his yapping jaws. A red tape of breaking headlines then broke out and overwrote his face in loud caps: "BREAKING NEWS: TETRA CORP. FINALIZES ACQUISITION OF INDUSTRY RIVALS CIP TECHNIC AND MASTER ELECTRONICS." I sighed and drooped my head back to face the ceiling. Ten minutes later, the train deployed its brakes and squealed to a stop.

"Welcome to Tetra Chromatics Corporation's Summit campus," the announcement squeaked.

A concrete courtyard revealed itself past Summit's North Station. It stretched to the horizon without purpose and yielded to a looming mass of metal that seemed to jut out from the ground like a deranged mountain. A monument of iridescent glass and steel, the Spire was an idol to the tenets of engineering. Transparent panels wrapped over the structural alloys and snuck around various geometries jutting out on rows of ledges. Gargoyles were too gothic for high-tech buildings, so they used tetrahedrons instead. Through the outer skin of windows, you could see the underlying arches and indeterminate figures struggling in the lobby as if trying to free themselves from imprisonment. Like all the other elements of the building, they always lost to the overbearing architecture.

I use the term "architecture" rather loosely. Summit's Spire was an example of a building that was imagined, designed, and bred by engineers and for engineers. I'm sure that no self-respecting architect with any artistic standard could have ever borne such a creation. It's true that it's probably the finest example of craftsmanship in the entire city. It sure was a beast of a building. But it wasn't elegant. It was all math and no art.

Most of the research and development took place in facilities just off the Spire. Chemicals were to the west, biotech was east, and mechanical engineering was south. Subdivisions such as robotics and microbiology scattered around the parent facilities like electrons to a nucleus. The Spire itself only held administration and other bureaucrats, since only they were important enough to work inside Tetra's great dong. For all the years I worked at the campus, I've never actually seen the entire place beyond the Spire and the southern facilities. Didn't have to and didn't ever care to want to.

"Good morning, Summit. The time is eight-thirty. Welcome to a new day of productivity and excellence," announced the computerized PA system. Her voice echoed alongside countless others of all pitches and tones in the lobby. In turn, hundreds of footsteps, magnified by the marble floors, drowned the voices. The melee reduced the rest of the pronouncements from PA to squawks--a loss of no real consequence other than missing her warm voice of condensed milk. I knew I had finally reached the upper echelons of the corporate drone when I often found myself unable to sleep at night because my place didn't possess the same cacophony of Summit's floors. That's when your friendly neighborhood sleep medications came to save the night.

Tetra's Summit. One of the largest and most prestigious corporate research and development facilities in the world. Only the best and brightest could find the honor of working here. At least, that's what America Today told me. The media wouldn't lie, right?

I was late that day. SX14 was on time all right, but I actually caught her second trip to Summit. Normally, punctuality was a virtue I always tried to strive for. I was mostly successful. Mostly. The problem with punctuality was that it was just too strict. It never allows any excuse for any reason. Punctuality never recognizes flus, accidents, funerals, diarrhea, Ebola, or in my case that day, a lack of mouthwash.

Mouthwash was one of the few things I took straight to my heart. Throughout my time here on Earth, I took many of life's miseries in stride. After all, what's life without some suffering? There wouldn't be any drama, and that would be boring. However, I made an exception for my breath. I had to buy a bottle of elixir that morning after the horror of discovering I had run out during my hygienic rituals. I made an emergency detour to a local thrift shop before I got to the train, but by then it had already left. A small price to pay. The ceremony of cleansing my mouth of evil was invocation I had never broken, lest the Elder Gods of Bodily Odors be offended. Punctuality be damned.

I ducked down and tried to sneak past the round reception desk at the center of the lobby, hoping to remain unnoticed by the creature inhabiting it. My stealth skills were pitiful that morning.

"Good morning, Mr. Ivano," a pleasant voice echoed. It stopped me in mid-step. "Did you sleep well today?"

I hesitated and then stood to meet its owner. I was greeted by a gentle smile and a stern face. I straightened up my clothes.

"Yeah. I slept great, Aimee."

Aimee gave me another smile while frowning at me. The paradox of emotions was an ability unique to robots, I've found. Not too long ago, Tetra had purchased for Summit's receptionist a "soft-metal" facial detailing system to enhance her ability to interact with guests. The package came with a suite of human-like expressions and responses executed with mechanical precision. These companies commissioned years of anthropological studies and spent millions in R&D to create these human-robot interaction systems, and the mechanics were technically flawless. But no amount of money could hide that those smiles were covering silver metal and gray polymers.

"That is very good, Mr. Ivano," Aimee said, her voice a calculated mix of honey and gasoline. She narrowed her indigo oculars at me. "Secondary Engineering shifts started twenty-seven minutes ago. You are late today."

"Yes, I am."

"Would you like to tell me why, Mr. Ivano?"

"Mouthwash."

"Please elaborate."

"I mean I ran out. You always need to wash your mouth."

"I do not believe that an unpleasant breath is an acceptable rationale for tardiness, Mr. Ivano." She placed her hands on the desk and toned her voice lower, which only made the contradiction with her smile even more absurd. "It is certainly not something one should risk his career over. I would say that even you would know better."

She then swallowed that mimicry of a human smile with metallic dispassion. I didn't pay any mind to it. Aimee had worn her "smile-and-antagonize" gambit well these days. I shook my head and wove my voice with forged indignation to counteract it.

"Do you know how big a deal bad breath is, Aimee? It's the cause of almost all of human conflict. Truly horrific stuff. What do you know of bad breath, anyway?" I leaned over and tapped the back of her hand. "It's not like you would know anything about the human condition, right? You oversized, expensive toaster."

"I beg your pardon Mr. Ivano, but I do not believe--"

"Sure you don't, dear. You pretend to, but you don't believe anything. Let's keep matters of humanity and its bad breath to us humies, eh? That keeps things civilized."

She formed her mechanical brows into a frown and her electronics seemed to buzz in thought. "Well. I suppose so, Mr. Ivano," she said after some reflection. "I was unaware this was such a serious human matter. I apologize for antagonizing you."

Her smile materialized once again without a hint of wear.

Happy I had weaseled my way to victory, I smiled, tapped her hand again, and continued on my way. I was almost at the mechanical engineering security checkpoint when I picked out her voice through the crowd: "But I still must inform human resources of your late arrival." With one foot on the ground in mid-walk, I twisted an about-face and ran back to the desk, where the receptionist was now occupying herself with computer tablet.

"Come on, Aimee! If HR finds out, then they're gonna tell payroll, and then those assholes will dock half my pay for the day. Please don't tell them."

She shook her head while still examining the tablet. "I am sorry, but rules are rules. It part of our Human Efficiency Initiative."

"Aw, come on Aimee! I have mouths to feed. Help a guy out, won't you?"

She looked up to me. "I know that you have no spouse nor do you have any dependents, Mr. Ivano."

"Of course I have dependents. I have a fish." Well not really, but she surely wouldn't have believed I owned anything more advanced. "He's a voracious bastard. I won't be able to feed him and he'll starve!"

"I am sure your fish will be able to cope."

"It's a big one. Eats a whole bunch."

"I have a contact for a discount marine supply shop, if you wish it."

Somewhat desperate, I played a final card. "Okay, if you don't tell HR, then--" I paused to bring out my best debonair voice, which fooled no one. "I'll take you out. Dinner. Just the two of us. Best night of your life."

I took Aimee's chrome-polished hand and pressed its back with a chivalrous kiss. She just smiled and politely withdrew her hand.

"I am sorry Mr. Ivano. But not only is bribery unethical, it is also quite illegal."

Defeated, I threw my hands in the air and bowed my head down. I peeked up in reverence. "Well, could we still go out for dinner anyway? Because a robot woman would be the only thing that would be into me after I go bankrupt from having a cut in my pay."

She chuckled and stood to push me toward the labs. Her hands rested on her silvery hips as she tilted her head in mock disapproval. I grinned and let her take this victory for the day. There will always be more tomorrow.

Past the checkpoint and in the circular hallway that joined the engineering labs, small groups of Primary engineers were mingling and exchanging small talk underneath the echoes of the announcements, which still hadn't exhausted its bank of corporate vomit. They paid only a glance as I politely made my way past. It was sophisticated conversation, business and politics and all that other grown-up stuff.

"You think they might just dismantle CIP and Master?" one red-tied engineer said. "I mean, we don't need CIP's fabs and Master hasn't made anything worthwhile in years."

"Nah," his blue-tied colleague replied. "We didn't buy them out just to shut them down. Who cares about them, anyway? They're just two lines to a bigger fish."

"Kanid Tech?"

"Bingo. Whom does Kanid contract to build their products? CIP. Who is their major supplier in electronic resources? Master." He slapped his palms together. "This is just a step to shut Kanid down for good."

Red tie-er chuckled. "And all because it was too stubborn to get bought out like good boys and girls. Sucks to be them."

"I dunno. Justice Department's been getting a little hairy about that deal, anyway. Goddamn anti-trust laws. Better to just take Kanid out and put it out of its misery, I say."

"Maybe we should just sell CIP and Master's assets and buy more lobbyists."

I shuffled by them and entered Secondary Engineering Lab 2.

Secondary Engineering was what the labs of the other engineering departments called the "grunt brigade." Small wonder: SE was where Summit performed its "rapid procedural engagement and development." It's an inspiring euphemism for "grunge-work that the other engineers are paid too well to do." This was where the unglamorous of engineering lived. Things such as endless lists of data that needed to be fed into various function machines, schematic sorting, finding all the rivets in a plate of sheet metal, "engineering emergencies" involving a damaged break room coffee maker, and so on. Secondary received table scraps that Primary didn't want to waste time and energy to chew, where the unimportant employees could digest and regurgitate.

That's what we secondary engineers really were: cannon fodder in the vast engineering army. We were armed with a handful of ammunition but no gun.

Both Secondary Engineering labs had the same format. The labs had 85 personnel stations arranged in five rings, each elevated higher than the innermost, around a central loop. They surrounded and positioned toward a central "arena" that housed an Alie-Grommot Model 3 mainframe. The machine sprawled all over the area with years' worth of cables, modules, and upgrade equipment grafted on like life support. These days, the mainframe mostly idles as a bloated retiree, cursing the world around it to die. Attached to the mainframe was a holographic projection platform that was quite useful as a snack table. The entire place evoked reminiscences of a miniaturized Coliseum, where engineering gladiators waged a spectacle for the rights of honor, glory, and the last raspberry doughnut.

Most of the techs had already begun on the day's work queue. The constant tapping of input boards masked my entrance, and my coworkers didn't even glance as I settled into my terminal and authorized my process on the mainframe.

Rows of data and text waltzed across my terminal screen. The rhythmic tapping of keys formed a metronome to my thoughts. Things to love: Flowcharts, schematics, and the rare piece of computer code. I had only started when a shout broke through and shook up the honeymoon.

"Hey! Ivan-o! Hee-yo!"

I peeked out and found the usual suspect: Mark Ellis, the lab's foreman, calling out through cupped hands from the arena.

"Lyle!" he called again. "Hey, where you been, you stupid son of a bitch? Back to work, I see? Thought you might've ate it or something!"

He ducked under a hanging data cable and climbed up the stairs to my station.

The steps seemed to cry and buckle under Mark's righteous footsteps of masculinity. He wasn't your fair-weather model man carrying baggages of emotions and sensitivity and all other sorts of nonsense, no sir. To Mark, a "man" was not a simple biological identification but an honorific. His carrying cards: his spleen-shattering voice, his rugged clothes that were 90% dead animal, his female company, and a face that could not be married yet remained irresistible to kisses. He's either a great guy to get drunk with at a bar or a ridiculous caricature, assessments that change depending on your mood. It's not impossible to be both.

He leaned against my station's partition in a pose familiar with male cover-shoot models.

"So what Lyle, you hate your job or something? You know what they do to laters here."

"No, it's fine. I got it squared away. Just have to eat half the paycheck."

"Yeah? Who'd you got to sleep with for that?"

"The receptionist."

"That robo-chick?" He laughed and slapped his knee. "Oh, you asshole. I don't know if that's awesome or just plain sad."

"A woman's a woman, Mark. They're all the same."

"God's woman is a might different than those ones from a goddamn factory, you know."

"God created woman in order to please man. He didn't say where she needed to come from, necessarily, so long as man is happy. Thus, they're all the same in his eyes."

He gave another chuckle and slapped my back, jolting my glasses off the bridge of my nose. "Lyle-boy, I like your attitude. That's a good outlook to have." His voice trailed off, and he began tapping the wall. "Come to think of it, that receptionist bot does sort of seem like a babe. As much a babe as a walking, talking refrigerator can be, anyway. Maybe I should check it out one of these days. Do robots even have the proper holes?"

Content I had humored him enough, I refocused back on the screen and continued working while Mark kept on his one-man conversation. Eventually, he became tired of talking and went back down to the arena, freeing me to work in peace reordering statistical data on a Shruet sprocket.

The lab's windows polarized, to block the sun's crankiness on its retreat underneath the earth, and eventually became opaque when the evening settled in. I finished my second work queue and prepped another set. Mark allowed me to stay for an extra shift to make up for my docked pay. By this time, only the dedicated remained, mostly young engineers or senior staff. The young techs keyed away at their pads as fresh as the morning, staying late to establish a couple new bullet points on their character references. The older ones did the same a lifetime ago, and now they used their keyboards as an elbow rest to prop their faces in their arms. The denizens of SE-2 were all alike.

Mark had shut down the most of the mainframe's processes and, appropriating the holographic platform as a dais, made the pronouncements to the remaining staff of lab closing procedures and the names of the all women he was taking out for the night. He announced that there were three but only called out one by name, "Candy."

With the overhead lights dimmed and most of the staff turned in, I went out to the lobby to take a breather. Softly lit and narrow spotlights dotted the marble floor and mingled with moonlight filtering in from the skylights in a soft glow. Summit's psychotic duality: deafening chaos in the day and introspective serenity at night. I never got used to nights at the place, confounded because it only bore such a personality at the times when it was abandoned and asleep. It was as if it was a girl who only shown her beauty when she was covered and away. Gone, empty, and unappreciated--even Aimee had shut down by this time. It's always a surprise, and sometimes fright, when it reminded me that I was born with footsteps.

Some other late-shift employees began to leave for home. I gave a few of them a "good-bye," but it mostly fell on deaf ears.

I stretched across a bench and took in the lullaby of Summit's groaning bowels and the splish-splash of the water fountain along one of the lobby's bends. It was a long day, but not particularly terrible. By the end of it, I still had a place to live and was in good health, so I marked it up as a net positive. These were things too many took for granted. I curled up on a bench and, warmed underneath a spotlight, dozed off.

---

It wasn't the screaming that shook me up cold, but that terrible crash that bellowed through the corridors. Stricken with waking paralysis, I craned my head around to try to identify the sound's origin. Another crash boomed across the lobby, followed by a series of staccato bellows. It was an assault that was enough to wake the dead. I tracked the sound and saw several security personnel rushing through to the engineering labs.

I was still processing then commotion when, suddenly, a scream ripped through the air and hammered my ears. It was unlike anything I ever heard before, sounding like a roar violating a shriek. The cry was so inhuman that my body seized with my mind unable to find a reaction. A shiver crawled along my back and the air became silent once again. I sat and gazed at the entrance to the labs. I could hear nothing but my own heartbeat.

To this day, I still don't know why I entered it.

As I crept through the hallway connecting the labs, a distant dread filled me. My eyes widened, trying to take in as much light as they could in the corridor that seemed darker than normal. I tiptoed, daring not to antagonize whatever terror lived ahead. What was it? What could have produced such a wicked screech? I blinked and shook my head. The hallway lengthened, and the lights that peppered its spine began to oscillate to an ominous heartbeat. I pulled my back against the wall and took a deep breath. I gathered some nerves and crept along with my back still against the wall. I didn't try to turn back--I had forgotten where the exit was.

Vague red hues latched along the hallway where the lights should have been. The sharp screams continued to taunt me in my ears. The hallway stretched and dimmed again and then terminated itself into a single bleak point. Something filled the hall, and I felt like I was crawling through sewage that stifled my movements and strangled the oxygen away.

Another scream ripped into the hallway and pressed against my eardrum. It threatened tear into my head. I plugged the holes in my head with my hands to bar away the sound. They bled through anyway. Fuck it. Fuck it! I ran.

I didn't know where I was running to, but just that I needed to run. Just run, just run, run. The last thing I remembered was a blinding flash when I crashed into a white wall. The whiteness glazed over until the world dimmed.

Chapter 1.2

Blurred dimples of light pained my eyes when my eyelids cracked open in slits, forcing me to squint and come back to the world through a haze. One by one, my senses trickled back and allowed me to rediscover my environment. The air bit with a scent that scrubbed the nostrils raw, and I snorted it out and resorted to breathing through my mouth. I craned up and rubbed my back--softness cradled it, which only made it even more sore, and I realized I was on a bed. I blinked a few times to steady the world into focus and found myself in a room bleached of color. Besides the bed and its white sheets, nothing furnished the white room save a white utility table with a white vase of artificial flowers that grasped on tinges of reds and blues. The flowers were only things in the room that seemed alive.

I reached over the table and felt for my glasses. After I put them on and allowed my eyes to refocus again, I spotted another decoration hanging on the opposite wall. It was a framed mat with a quotation stitched upon it:

Listen to my counsel: You can take nothing with you from

this life, and whatever you give away at death for the Lord's

sake you give because you cannot take it with you.

Give now to the true Savior, while you are healthy, whatever

you intended to give away at your death.

Below the text was an accreditation to St. Lucia of Syracuse.

Ah, hell. St. Lucy's Medical Center, Tetra's own pet hospital. It sat near Summit and was available for use by its staff and their families. I must have been admitted while I was unconscious, no doubt after someone had stumbled across my miserable body on the hallway floor.

As the anesthesia of sleep wore off, a dull pain began throbbing in my skull. I felt my forehead and found a padding of bandages wrapped around my head. I tried to pull the gauze away to scratch at the skin, but I couldn't pinch through all the layers. I must have taken a pretty hard hit from God-knows-what.

I was trying to make sense of what had happened when the door clicked open and invited in waft of cool air. I almost didn't see the nurse come in, her white uniform camouflaging her against the room. A look of surprise stained her cute face when she saw me.

"Oh, you're finally awake!" She came to the bedside and touched my forehead just past the bandaged area. "Are you feeling all right? You got a nasty hit there."

I flinched when she brushed over the bandage. "Eh, it's just my head. It's not like I use it that often anyway."

She smiled and did some checkups.

"I'll tell the doctor that you're awake," she said when she finished. "He'll be able to explain things better to you."

Before she left, she poured a glass of water from the table sink and opened the window blinds to remind me how awful the world was in the morning.

I nestled back into the pillow and stared at the ceiling. A fucking hospital room, Christ. Well, it was an improvement over my usual accommodations. Despite all its pallor and barren sensibilities that numbed the eyes, it was comfortable. In fact, compared to Summit, St. Lucy's was absolutely inviting. It was a hospital that was actually hospitable--fancy that! It's a depressing revelation when you discover that a hospital room, where the sick go to suffer and the old go to die, is more pleasant than your own workplace. All those years on the job had warped my sense of coziness.

I had relaxed on the bed for a few minutes, taking some sips of the water the nurse poured for me, when the doctor came in reading a smart tablet. He introduced himself as Dr. Cromwell. I wasn't allowed the opportunity to engage in pleasantries as he went straight into the business of my health.

"Well, Mr. Ivano. It looks like you took a pretty bad hit on your head. You had a minor concussion."

"Oh, that's it? Whew, I thought I might have been gremlins. I hate those things."

"No, I never heard of gremlin-related injuries before," he said, still studying his tablet. "At any rate, the damage isn't serious and you'll be fine in a few."

I sighed. Questions floated through my head as I tried to piece together the night before. I sat up on my pillow and asked, "How did I get hit anyway, Doctor?"

He shrugged. "I was hoping you'd tell me. You were just carried into the ER by Summit security with a big gash on your head. Didn't give any words on how or when or why."

And the good doctor apparently didn't see fit to ask them, either.

Cromwell gave me some care directions for my head and whatnot. I didn't really pay attention. I just slumped back down, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the warming beams of sunlight filtering through the blinds. I almost dozed off when realization struck me. I interrupted his instructions.

"Doctor! What time is it?"

He peeked up from his tablet with an annoyed look. "About eight-thirty or so."

Work! I was going to be late for work! I leapt off bed and scrambled around the room to find the closet I knew existed. I eventually found it, a hairline creak separating the door from the walls, and grabbed my clothes from inside. I was already out the room when the doctor tried to stop me with the conviction that I needed more rest. His pleas became distant echoes as I ran down the medical hall with my shirt, pants, and tie jumbled in my arms. I'm sure he didn't lose any sleep over me, though. My health insurance didn't pay enough for him to care.

I must have been an incredible spectacle: a drugged and slightly delirious half-naked man hopping across the street and trying to pull a pants-leg up through the angry morning traffic, just begging to create an entertaining accident for the morning news. I didn't care and juggled the rest of my clothes on while cars honked and drivers swore at me. I was damned if I had to take another late pay.

I was in Summit's courtyard when I finished "dressing"--if you could call it that, with my shirt mis-buttoned and half-tucked and my pants unzipped. I raked through my hair using my fingers as a comb and tried to pluck as much fuzz off my chin as I could with my fingertips. I hadn't even removed my hospital gown, electing to wear my clothes over it. Despite my rush, I still had the right mind to buy a small bottle of mouthwash at the hospital's pharmacy before I hurried out. I gargled the minty fluid and spat the brew out on the steps up to the Spire.

The air that swooshed out and welcomed me, fertile with the sounds of business, helped dried off the sweat that collected on my face. I hunched over with my hands on my knees, took a breather at the entrance for a few moments, and then pulled up my fly and stumbled, with as much dignity as I could muster, into the lobby. The automated PA system announced the time as 8:50 AM and started another repeat of the morning broadcasting agenda. Whew! I could now devote some energy to clutching the bandaged area on my head, which started whining in throbs after I had neglected it for so long.

I thought about the night before. The engineering labs. The security guards. Those awful screams. My ability to completely wreck myself and run around like a raving lunatic without a drop of sweat.

They say that extraordinary circumstances allow the best of men to become free and for heroism and courage to stand up in the face of incredible odds. For me, however, the "extraordinary" feat I possessed is the ability to break down like a schoolgirl. Forget that, I knew some tough schoolgirls back when. My reaction was not deserving of even a scathing mention in Wuss Monthly. All it took was an empty hall (a hallway, mind you, I had used hundreds of times) and some scary noises. There it is: a broken and whimpering Lyle. I wish that I could have said that that last night was a one-off occurrence, an outlier in a lifetime of rationality. But I would be lying.

Ain't anything hard for Lyle, 'tis all.

I greeted Aimee at the reception desk and received her usual smile. I considered asking her if she knew what happened yesterday night, but it would have been a waste of both our times. A receptionist--a recyclable one at that--wouldn't be on Tetra's need-to-know list. Besides, she seemed to have lacked the "Recognize Lyle's Head Bandage" subroutine.

Memories of last night halted me at the security checkpoint. Peering beyond the gates, I closed my eyes and replayed the memories. Dark shadows, blood-red lights, and terrible cries. As my eyelids fell, my concentration drowned out the ruckus of the lobby and I strained to hear any noise that would shake me back to reality. Silence. I blinked my eyes open and made my way in.

A group of engineers lumbered past by me. They voiced their conversations to each other in irritated mumbles. I looked back to see them exit out to the lobby and, eventually, out of the building. Then, even more groups made their way to the out, and I had to brace myself against the wall to allow the herd to pass. All they left behind were dirty footprints. Strange.

I rounded the curve and found Mark staring at the wall adjoining SE-2's entrance. He strained out a beet face that complemented the mumbling curses he spat to the wall, mostly proper names mated to various adjectives. Every few seconds, he pounded his fists into the wall and cursed a new name. The plastic panel would buckle under his blows and then plop back out as if to antagonize him some more. I stood clear and listened him bark off about a dozen different names. I've heard them all before. "Fucking Jenson," our department head, "Asshole Trudeau," the CIO, "Motherfucker Hammond," the CEO, "Cocksucking Jackson," the HR head, "Motherfucking Samuels," the janitor, et al. The standard Mark Ellis shitlist.

"Assblowing, dickfucking, shitnecked, fucks-his-mom Lyle!"

That one was new.

It probably would've been a good idea to just turn around and follow the rest of saner engineers out of Summit, but dammit, I wanted to work. I thought I could sneak by Mark. The concussion told me I could totally do it.

"Lyle!"

Lying rat bastard.

Again, I pressed my back onto the wall, and I braced myself for Mark. I flinched when he brought up a fist seemingly to pound my face, but it struck the wall next to me in a hollow thud. I slunk down a little and had to look up to him. He pulled me up by the shoulders and rattled me.

"What the goddamn hell happened last night?" His voice sounded as red as his face.

"Last night?"

"Don't play dumb with me, goddammit. I want to know what the fuck happened last night in the fucking lab!"

"Well actually, I was hoping that you'd tell me..." I trailed off when veins started popping up on his forehead.

"Tell you? Tell you? If I knew, I wouldn't have to ask you, asshole!"

He started blasting the walls again, now with both hands sandwiching my head. I had no escape from the enraged foreman, so I braced myself on the vibrating walls and rode it out. When the pounding finally stopped, Mark drooped his head down and took a deep breath, his fists still nested against the wall.

"Lyle," he said with a voice that crackled to remain calm. "Just give it straight. Just tell me what happened. I need to know, dammit."

"I wish I could tell you, I really do. But I really, honestly don't know what the hell happened."

He brought his head up. "And why the hell not? You were here last night, weren't you?"

"Yeah, but I don't remember anything. I was taken to the hospital after being knocked the hell out." I pointed to the bandage on my head.

He looked over my head for a bit and just uttered a terse "dammit." Then, he dropped his hands to his side, swirled around until his back met the wall next to me, and slid down to the floor. "Goddammit," he murmured.

In an effort not to seem conspicuous by staring at him, I turned away and looked around the hallway. It was completely empty save for the two of us. I pressed onto the door to SE-2, but it refused to budge open.

"It's locked," Mark mumbled. He stood up and brushed off his pants. "Everybody's gone home."

"They shut down the labs?"

He pulled his shirt out from his pants to scratch his stomach. He wandered around the hallway, seeming to have expended his rage, so I followed him.

"Whatever you assholes did last night," he said, "it was enough for them to shut down the whole goddamn department. Primary, Secondary, fucking everything. No holiday pay, either."

Oh damn it all. First, I lose half my pay for yesterday, and now I was forced to eat a sick day. Not only that, they'll drive us all into extra shifts tomorrow to make up for today's work queue. This week was turning absolutely lovely. I began to regret not taking Dr. Cromwell's prophetic advice and staying back at St. Lucy's. There, at least, I had a pretty nurse to tend to me.

"The fucking shits won't even tell me why, either," he continued. "And you just had to get your dumb ass knocked in the head. I'm left with just an empty, locked lab and a bunch lemon doughnuts. I hate lemon."

"Why don't you ask the other guys? I wasn't the only one that stayed late."

"Of course you weren't, you dumb bastard. You think I haven't tried asking them?" He fumbled inside his pocket and produced a cigarette, lit it up, and took in a long, methodical drag in defiance of Summit's non-smoking policy. "The brass came in and took them for questioning. Those sons-of-bitches won't tell me anything worth a damn."

"Summit's pretty good with the memos, though. I'm sure we'll get answers soon."

"Not Summit, chief. Tetra. Straight from corporate."

My stomach churned. Corporate? Coming to investigate some petty disturbance in Secondary, of all places? That's like the President coming down to Boise to inspect a pothole that just popped up on the highway. Fuck me. I really should've just stayed in bed and get that sponge bath.

A group of footsteps in the distance caught our attention. "Speak o' the devil," Mark sputtered when he saw our new visitors.

He nodded towards a group of three dapper-looking gents walking toward us. Black sharks in the corporate ecosystem. Their footsteps echoed in mechanical claps that sounded more expensive than my life's wroth. A gold emblem of interlocking triangles on their breast pocket advertised their employ: these were the Tetra administrators Mark bitched about. Like seasoned predators out for prey, they swooped down upon me, and I had nothing to defend myself but Mark, who grabbed my shoulders again.

"Mr. Ivano," one of them called out to me. He stopped a meter in front of me and his lackeys posed on either said of him like corporate cheerleaders. "You are Lyle Ivano, correct?"

I only had time to nod before Mark intervened. He wedged himself between the suits and me and started pounding his fists into the air.

"Damn right he is. Let me introduce you all. Lyle, meet tight-asses. Tight-asses, meet Lyle." He pantomimed exaggerated handshakes as he made the introductions. "Now that you've all been acquainted, let's get down to business and tell me what the hell is going on."

The suit looked straight past him to me.

"Mr. Ivano, we are aware that you were present last evening when a certain disturbance took place."

I nodded again. Mark moved to block me with his head and waved his arms around for attention.

"Hey, I'm talking to you!" he shouted. "I'm his goddamn boss and I want some goddamn answers!"

The executive peered around the angry foreman. "We would like to have a word with you, Mr. Ivano. Please come with us."

His words carried a tone that made clear that it was not a request.

I nodded again, and they led me down the hall to the security station. Along the way, I could hear a screaming and cursing Mark, followed by the hollow drumming of beating walls, which stopped only when I entered the security room.

---

Sleep came easily that night. I slept with my all clothes on, including the hospital gown, since changing took too much effort that I didn't care to expend. It wasn't exhaustion from work, obviously, with the labs shut down and all. My life's discovery for the day was that sharing an hours-long conversation with a bunch of corporate suits in a security room wasn't all that fun and was, in actuality, pretty grueling. They interrogated me on issues that eluded me and offered me no answers in return. It was like trying to solve some jigsaw puzzle with blank tiles. It consisted of the same questions--what I saw, what I did, and how I did it--repeated and reworded until I stumbled on a permutation of answers that satisfied them. Apparently, being unconscious in a hospital wasn't an acceptable excuse for uninformed answers.

It took an authenticated record from St. Lucy's (which took an additional hour to produce) to finally convince them of my veracity. That large, bandaged gash on my head was falsifiable, of course, but papers never lie. They left me with a warning not to disclose last night's events under the penalty of termination and possible criminal charges. Heavy threats for someone who hadn't the foggiest idea what those fucking events were. By the day's end, I had nothing but an incredible headache from the roundabout Tetra fed to me. The concussion probably didn't help either.

I resigned myself to the idea that I'd never know the truth, and it comforted me. Tomorrow, the executives will be on an airfoil back to Albuquerque and leave the rest of us to continue gallantly on the same grind no worse for the wear. It was the nature of things. I finally took to bed with an empty head and a clear conscience. I didn't even need to resort to the pills.

It was the fullest sleep that I had in a long while.

2. Between civilized souls and savage beasts.

Chapter 2.1

It was unusually quiet on the train that morning. A storm front had materialized during the night and smashed through the city with wet fury all night long, and it raged too hard to let the sun have its turn in the heavens. The noise of bloated raindrops rattled against the train's exterior in thousands of incessant thunks that overpowered the drone of the mag-lev systems. I stretched my legs across an empty row of seats and relaxed to the serenade. The damp and cold day had restrained many would-be workers to their homes by creating all manner of imagined illnesses.

The rain's insistent throbbing on the roof had awakened from bed. It worked as well as any regular alarm. Better even, since it energized me. Mother Nature and I were on good terms as it so happened. Rain, no matter how soggy, cold, or inconvenient, never gave me any discomfort. Not aching joints, or sore colds, or pneumonia, or whatever else people like to pretend they have when foul weather comes. Rain is a beautiful thing; the glum and darkened clouds were a source of wonder and content.

Of course, it's no coincidence that rain also makes people scarce. You traded in the hustle and bustle of the populace for a few hours of wetness. In effect, the heavy sound and force of a good storm tranquilizes things. I cherished that ironic tradeoff. Spring downpours are good omen.

I loved the rain.

North Station's glass overhead sheltered the exiting passengers from the shower but kept the thick, fragrant air. Delicate swirls of warm breaths danced through the atmosphere before melting into the cold. The Spire itself was a faint outline in the haze--its man-made presence no contest to nature. Most made used the tunneled walkways to make their way to their destinations, but I chose to cut directly into the courtyard. Rain had enough trouble biting through the urban sprawl, so I wanted to experience it as much as I could. Massive puddles had formed in the aged depressions of the concrete, just waiting for a child to splash into it. I might have let myself go a couple times. I couldn't help it. I would certainly regret the heavy and soggy clothes when I got to work, but screw it.

The temperature shock when I came inside instantly fogged up my glasses. I shook the water off of my coat as I walked, begetting annoyed stares from people when they had to move to avoid splashes on the floor. I made a point to get as close as I could to them when I shook. They were too dry, and those who couldn't enjoy the rain should be pitied.

As always, Aimee was at her desk. She was organizing some documents. I leaned against the desk and waited for her to acknowledge me.

"Hello there, Mr. Ivano," she said with a nod and a smile.

I spread my hands on her desk, leaned in a bit, and said, "Well, have you considered my offer yet? I really need to know before the end of the day."

"I am afraid I do not recall your proposal."

"A yes or a no, sweetie. Don't play games."

"No, I really do not recall," she said, her voice tuning down to match the confusion program running on her face. "I am sorry. Perhaps you could remind me?"

"Of course you remember! You can't do this to a man. He can only take so much teasing." I leaned in closer until I was next to her head. "I promised you dinner. So, yes or no?"

She terminated the confusion and smirked. "Oh Mr. Ivano! That is an inappropriate proposition, and you know it."

"I can't help it, Aimee! Just every part of you drives me nuts! Your sleek body, your soft metal hands, your lovely and expensive face, your cute little plastic butt. I'm not even going to talk about your new memory upgrades. Oh baby, you know it makes me hot."

I had to keep myself from giggling to death saying that bullshit. Aimee, to her credit, played along and cooed as best as a robot could.

"Oh, it will never work out between us, Mr. Ivano. I am a high-end piece of technology, while you are just a simple organic creature."

"Hey now, that's not fair."

"And besides, could you ever be able to support me? I require at least two maintenance trips per week, and this face of mine certainly does not take care of itself. Let us be realistic," she said as her face twisted with haughtiness, "I am just simply too expensive for you."

"But..."

She used a finger to silence my lips. "No more words. It is over between us. Now get to work before I report you late again."

Aimee beamed with her hands on her hips. Oh well. One of these days, I'll finally defeat her mechanical logic. But I didn't want to leave without a parting shot.

"All right, all right, Aimee. You win for now. I'll leave you be, but in the meantime, wear some clothes would you?" I took off my coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. "You look like a tramp going without clothes all the time."

Before she could say anything, I scrammed for the labs. When I took a look back at the checkpoint, she shook her head at me, hung my drenched coat on the corner of the desk, and began wiping rainwater off her silver body. I waved her goodbye, and she shook her head again, but then smiled.

The usual group of engineers loitered around in the engineering hall, obviously still paid too much to do any real work. I expected at least a few of them to harass me about Secondary's low output, which yesterday's shutdown only exacerbated. It's the standard inter-department rivalry: Primary bitches at Secondary for being slackers and holding up their work, Secondary bitches at Primary for being unreasonable, overpaid assholes, and I just trudge along thankful that a robot hadn't stolen my job yet. I tucked to the walls and tried to avoid them, but one of them recognized me. He blocked my path with an arm.

"Hey, aren't you the guy that got clobbered a couple nights ago?" he asked.

"I think you might have the wrong guy," I replied.

"Nah, nah, I don't think so." He waved near my forehead. "It's definitely you. Oh shit, I knew it! Hey guys, come look at this!"

As soon as he called out for them, the scattered groups suddenly began clustering around me. Apparently, the way to impress your co-workers was to suffer a head injury, because they started pointing and gaping at me. Had I known, I would have gotten concussions more often.

"Wait, you were the guy that got decked?" someone said.

"Probably," I said.

"On the head, right?" another asked.

"Yeah."

"In SE?"

"I guess so."

Incredulity groaned through the hall. The wide hall began to feel packed as the crowd gawked at me as if I was some fantastic oddity. Like, if Tutankhamen's tomb itself was opened for the world to see, and I was the mummified corpse. I stood in self-conscious confusion and couldn't think of anything to do but listen to the crowd's huddled whispers.

"No, it can't be."

"Yes it is! I saw it."

"Damn, there's the man, right there."

"Oh shit. Oh shit."

"Doesn't it hurt at all?"

"Jesus Christ. How could he still be standing?"

Before long, a stark yell broke through the air. "You maggots, get the hell back to work. Get off of my boy, there." An excited Mark pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed my arm. "Clear out, all of you, before I send Lyle here to smash the lot of ya."

The crowd dispersed, but not without stares and incredulous murmurs lingering. I was still standing dumbfounded when Mark shook me back to reality.

"What the hell just happened?" I said.

"Pay no attention to those fools. They've just never seen a real man before."

"What the hell are you talking about? The hell is anyone talking about?"

"They're just surprised to see you alive, that's all."

With that, all he gave was a grin before he escorted me to SE-2.

Okay, so let's get some things straight. I could handle bodily injuries. Sure, I was a fucking stick, and that shit hurts like hell, but they were a natural part of life. When I was a kid, I broke my arm when I tried to ride a sled down a hill--in the summer. That incident taught me life lessons that changed my life. Here I was now, a proud and respected entry-level engineer seven years strong, charged with doing important work. In contrast, the rest of my childhood friends, who had not broken their arms, went on to such menial professions as doctors, screenwriters, war heroes, and state governors. I pitied them and their intact arms. No, broken bones and head injuries built life-long character.

I could handle unwanted attention from complete strangers. This is coming from someone that once, for Halloween, dressed as a gigantic earthworm. It would have been fine had people not mistaken it for a phallus. And of course, had I not mistaken November 1st as Halloween. But damn it, I paid good money for that costume, and I sure as hell wore the goddamned thing, one day late or not.

I could even handle corporate suits harassing me and threatening my job and my freedom. Because, hey, that's just how you do business.

I could honestly tolerate many things. Life is too short and unusual to sulk over inconsequential bullshit. But one thing I cannot absolutely, positively handle was the surprise that I was still somehow fucking alive. There I was, being led back to the place where I almost fucking died by my goofy-grinning boss, and no one bothered to tell me this before. Sure, why the fuck not? It's okay, Lyle really doesn't mind cheating death to continue making this place its money. Honest. God, I love this company!

It not was until I got into the lab when everything became frighteningly clear.

It seemed normal enough at first glance, but something immediately felt amiss. Everything was far too quiet. I could sense a certain tenseness clouding over the room, that unease that you could feel chewing at your gut but you haven't the foggiest clue why. Away from the normal grind of their work, everyone wore a distracted nervousness that gave me the chills.

"Everyone thought you died," Mark said as he brought me to my station and sat me down. "'Cept me, of course. I knew my man here is a goddamn son of a bitch, and he wasn't taking shit from nothing, no sir."

"Dammit, Mark!" I nearly yelled. No one bothered to make inconsiderate glances.

"What's with you?"

"What's with me? You tell me! I stay up late to work on some fucking bullshit this company shoves down my throat, wake up in a fucking hospital, and now everything's surprised I'm still fucking alive? Goddammit, what the hell is going on here?"

"Shhh! Quiet down. You don't want to wake up those bastards, do ya?" He chuckled. "That is, 'less you wanna go to round two."

The hell is he talking about?

He understood my confusion and waved to the arena. I didn't see anything and asked what the hell he was trying to show me. He pointed more insistently down, so I took deeper look. I panned from the stairs down, to the winding paths built from piles of cabling, to the mainframe, and then to the holographic platform. Suddenly, something snapped in the recesses of my mind, and my eyes glued themselves to the platform as if they saw a ghost. Camouflaged against the white surface, some things lay in wait. My mind couldn't wrap around what they were, but my instinct knew exactly. I stared at them, and I might have forgotten to breathe if Mark hadn't grabbed my shoulders.

"So, gonna go for it?" he said. "I'll put down a hundred bucks if you do. That'll get me a hot date and everything."

I didn't speak. I just stared at the pair of white reptilian-like beasts deep in cold slumber on the platform. Those were it. Them! These fucking things almost killed me!

"Eh?" Mark said after prolonged silence.

"What... what the hell is this?" I sputtered.

He chortled. "Son of a bitch! How long are you going to play that stupid 'I-don't-know-nothing' bullshit? Ah, fuck it. You remember two nights ago, right?"

I nodded in a way that didn't cause my gaze to wander away from the platform. I didn't dare to look away from the creatures for a second.

He pointed to the creatures. "Well, those bastards right there? They busted into the lab that night and started making wrecking shit in the lab. Fucking horrible situation. They even had to call in security. Those fuckers were so insane, even the sec guys didn't want to touch them. But not you, Mr.-Fucking-Universe here." He slapped my back and almost knocked me off my chair. "From what I heard, you just fucking stormed into this goddamn room and a fucking wailed on them. I would've loved to see that."

I stared.

"Well," he said, "one of those things finally took you down. Knocked you straight in the head, but you already know that. By then, they got too tired to fight back and security finally took 'em away. Still, you're a fucking hero, Lyle. Lotsa dipshits here would have probably got hurt if it weren't for you. I'm proud of you, you brave and stupid motherfucker."

I continued to stare.

Mark was a boisterous, embellishing, and rather crude man, but he wasn't particularly prone to lying. If anything, his willingness to praise someone other than himself spoke of his sincerity.

Oh, what the fucking hell have I gotten myself into now? Fuck my life.

I gawked at the creatures lying on the platform with their jaws slacked and exposing pernicious rows of teeth in awful candor. The maws looked like they could swallow a human head. Those terrible things birthed those hounding sounds that night. I didn't want to see them anymore than I had to, but I couldn't help but stare.

These were the creatures that nearly sent me to my grave.

I stood up and grabbed Mark's hand. "These things... these things almost killed me. These damned things almost killed me!"

"Ah calm down, you dumbass. You ain't dead now."

"Why are they here, Mark? Why?"

"Jesus Christ, I don't know." He shook off my grip. "Sit the hell down, you idiot. You're making a damned scene."

He roughly took my arm and pushed me back onto the chair. He then sat on the edge of my desk and blocked my view.

"Look, it's Tetra, okay?" he explained. "Remember those suits from yesterday? Yeah well, this was why they were here. Company's got an interest in these things, for whatever goddamn reason, and they told me to keep them here, all right? Hell, they even got a chaperone."

He pointed to the far end of the arena, off the side, where a woman sat. I hadn't noticed her before. She sat still, observing the creatures in their sleep, and was apparently undeterred by their close presence.

"Chick's been here all day," said Mark. "Supposed to be looking after these things or something. Has a nice ass."

I shook in my chair. Mark stood back up and allowed me stare at the creatures again. This was madness. These were the things that caused havoc in the labs and nearly crushed my skull in... and Tetra was letting them reign free, right here. Fucking here! I was nearly as angry as I was afraid. Mark must have seen my exasperation.

"Look," he said, "I don't like this shit any as much as you do, right? But if Tetra says I gotta do something, I gotta do it. I'll try to take care of this later, but right now, we have to get some work done. They ain't payin' us to sit pretty."

I heard the words but I couldn't register them. My hands tapped on the keyboard and typed random gibberish on the pad. For a while, I didn't even notice the terminal was still off. All I could concentrate on was the holographic platform. Images from that night, which I thought I had forgotten, flooded back. Those screams.

Two of them, side-by-side. I couldn't exactly place what disturbed me so. Maybe it was their cruel, primitive white forms that intruded so arrogantly in our own lab. Nearly killing a man wasn't enough for these things. No, they had to show themselves off the world like the pompous fuckers they were. Pompous and dangerous.

Mark left me to my job, but I don't remember what I work I accomplished that day.

---

Everyone evacuated the lab awfully quick come break time. I couldn't really blame them. I would have readily joined in the exodus. How I would have loved to. But I really couldn't. Of course, I was alarmed. With the safety of numbers gone, I was the only lone and utterly defenseless target in a room full of chairs and uneaten donuts. But in a way that words could not express, I felt compelled to stay.

I'm sure it was because I wasn't actually alone in the lab.

Too distracted from the creatures, I hadn't paid attention to the woman that took residence in the arena. While the rest of the lab staff had filtered out, she remained in the same spot with her attention on tablet that rested on her folded legs. We were the only two humans left in the room, and the vacancy of the crowd allowed me to notice her.

Mark wasn't totally wrong. She was pretty cute, wearing an ensemble consisting of a pinkish blouse, dark knee-length skirt, and short-heeled pumps. She wore her black hair in terse, curled bobs that framed around a thin face where a pair designer glasses balanced on. A fine blemish marred the bony cheek of her right side, but it was fine enough for 87% of the male population to ignore. Especially fine enough since the only woman that I regularly saw in Summit was Aimee (who, being a robot, didn't really count). I didn't know about her ass.

I ended up lingering on her for a bit, not because she was a pretty woman trapped in a horndog hellhole (though you couldn't blame me if I did leer a little), but because she hovered no more than two meters away from those fucking animals on the platform. And she looked like she couldn't be any more mundane. This woman had a secret, and I balanced my thoughts away from the beasts just long enough to become intrigued.

More than anything, though, I hoped she could finally shed some light to this madness.

Mustering up what little manly courage I possessed, I made my way down and teetered on the last step to the arena. My right foot hovered in mid-air in preparation for the final step down, but I thought about it and pulled it back. I loudly cleared my throat to catch the woman's attention, but she didn't respond, so I forced it even louder and strained my vocal cords in the process. She finally glanced up from her tablet.

"Hello there. What are you doing?" I said. Damn, I'm smooth.

She stood up and straightened her skirt. "Oh, just passing through," she replied.

I offered my hand out for a handshake across the arena from her. Decidedly un-slick, but I didn't want to get any closer to the creatures than I had to. The woman stared at me blankly--looking at me as if I was an idiot--and walked over to take my hand.

"Lyle Ivano," I said as we shook.

"Arlene Neuman. Pleasure to meet you."

I remained on the first step of the stairs, which caused me to peer uneasily down to face her. In my effort to think of something to say, I must have inadvertently gaped at her too long.

"What's the matter?" she said. "Never seen a girl before?"

I felt my cheeks burn a few degrees higher. "Ah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. Girls are sort of endangered around here." I managed a bogus chuckle.

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm just here on a short visit. I'll be out of here before long, and you boys can do whatever it is boys do."

She smirked and turned back to the creatures on the platform. I stuttered over her shoulder.

"I'm... I'm assuming you're from Tetra HQ?"

She pulled up her tablet. "No, I'm from the I.C. Wyvern Institute."

"Wyvern? You're some sort of researcher?"

"Yep. I'm a biologist. At least that's what they hired me as, anyway." She waved at the platform. "It seems I've been doing everything but biology work these days."

I glanced at the creatures. They were still in oblivious slumber. I gasped out a sigh and tested a foot down to the arena, but ended up reeling it back. "So, you're in charge of these... creatures?"

"Well, yes and no. I'm their official caretaker, but they mostly take care of themselves." She shook her head. "Whether I like it or not."

"What exactly are they doing here, anyway? An engineering lab is no place of these... things."

The glare she gave when she faced me again almost made me stumble off the steps. She frowned and clasped a hand to her hip.

"And where do you think these things belong?" she asked.

"Well... I don't know. In a zoo? In a cage? Just anywhere else but here."

"Really? In a cage?"

"Yeah, locked up and away from people. I don't know why these animals are here and what this whole business is."

"Maybe you should ask your company." She turned her back to me and waved a hand over her shoulder. "Tetra brokered a deal for these animals, as you say, and like it or not, a cage is the last thing they're going into."

"Tetra made a deal for these things? I find that hard to believe."

"Believe whatever you want. But I assure you it's all very legal."

Arlene pulled a chair closer to the platform and sat with her body leaned forward, using her right forearm to prop her chin over her leg. "Look, I'm not exactly thrilled about the whole thing either," she said. "God knows I've fought against it tooth and nail. But my superiors figured it'd be a good idea to expose them to more humans. Everything went too fast. They weren't even supposed to be even around Summit's people yet."

Of course not, because they're prone to chewing people's faces off.

"I bet," I said.

"Something went wrong two nights ago, have you heard?"

"Yeah. I was here."

She shook her head. "I'm so sorry. Horrible, wasn't it? The one day I'm not here to look after them and something like that happens. I should have never left them alone their first night here."

It hit me. That's what she was, damage control! These creatures almost maimed and killed a bunch of people because of Tetra's dumbshittery, and now she had to take the fall. I gazed at her as she stared at the creatures. It was the look of frustration--frustration of having her warnings continually ignored. I knew that look very well.

"That's too bad," I said. I teased my foot down the last step. "But it's not your fault. Really, I know. It's the goddamned bureaucracy. They just don't listen or understand the peons like you and me."

She sighed and smiled at me. It was wonderful seeing a female smile that wasn't programmed by a dozen men in a robotics lab. It convinced me to take the final step down.

"I'm glad someone here understands the truth," she said. "Everyone else here thinks the lizards are stark raving savages."

Yes, fuck everyone else who thinks the lizards are... what?

She straightened up and singed her voice with resentment "Can you believe it? Some lunatic tried to attack them that night. They were here, minding their own way, and some idiot attacked them. And the incompetent guards did nothing to stop it. I feel sorry that the lizards had to go through that mess."

What? What? What the hell?

"Are you... are you mental?" I said. She took offense with a sharp look, but I couldn't think of anything other way to put it. "They're the ones that attacked us. You should feel sorry for us."

Arlene was silent for a moment, just staring at me, and then laughed. And laughed. She laughed as if it was about to become extinct. I wound back up the steps. Lord Almighty. This woman's a loon.

She finally slapped her thighs, calmed herself, and turned body around to face me. She leaned forward and pointed to me with her elbow anchored on her knee.

"You actually believe that nonsense? Really now? And here I thought that you actually seemed intelligent. Shame on me for assuming." Another laugh.

"How would you know?" I snapped. "You weren't there. I was. I believe my own eyes more than the words of some stranger I just met."

"And I believe the security cameras more than your eyes."

She took her tablet and, after placing some taps, lifted it up for me to see. And sure enough, there it was: the security feed for SE-2, split across multiple sections of the tablet for each camera. A visualization of the wide-space sensor occupied the center, backing the feeds with a three-dimensional overview of the entire lab and adjoining hallway. Everything was present and accounted for, from the employees, to the security guards, to the creatures, and to me.

It wasn't a pleasant image. Unpleasant for my ego. Each new scene from the feeds whittled down my self-esteem in sized chunks. Chunk 1: watching myself bumbling down the hallway like a psychopathic lab rat on heroin. Chunk 2: the image of me entering the lab and nearly bowling over a security guard standing at the ready. Chunks 3 through 43: each step I stumbled down toward the arena.

Then creatures came into view, and I finally what kind of beasts they truly were: the kind that enjoyed licking themselves on the floor. I thought I was hallucinating. But no, that was it. The truth. They were grooming themselves on the floor of the arena while the rest of the sensible and sane stayed clear.

"Oh, such horrible beasts," Arlene said.

And then I saw myself trip into the arena. And I wanted to cry.

I knew the outcome of the video. I didn't need reminding. But that was a small worry since it was all over in a couple of frames. Before I could blink or look away, I witnessed myself crumpling like a wet rag on the floor, and the creatures backed up against a table and hissed furiously at my body. The feed then went black.

Arlene dropped the tablet when it was over, and the floor punted it a few times until the poor device finally settled between some data lines. She brushed her skirt and folded her hands on her lap. Her lips held a crinkled, nascent scowl.

"Some hero, eh?"

I sputtered, but I couldn't form words.

"You know, I knew something looked familiar about you. But I couldn't place it until just a few moments ago. You sure didn't look like a psychopath at first glance. My fault for judging a book by its cover."

"I'm not... I'm not like that!"

"Could've fooled me, psychopath. You're lucky that gash on your head was all you got. You could've easily gotten worse."

"Dammit, would you just listen to me?"

She crossed her arms waited.

I stroked my forehead, perhaps thinking I could massage out a coherent explanation, but all I got was a familiar throbbing. "Well, you see, that wasn't me there. I mean, it was me, but not really me, you get it? Sometimes it happens, but it doesn't happen a lot, in fact very rarely, but it sometimes happens. Sometimes I... well... I panic."

"So now you're telling me you just had a panic attack, is that it?"

"Kinda. Sorta. Something like that. I don't know, okay? It just happened. Maybe it was the stress from the long workday, maybe it was exhaustion, or maybe my mind just got stupid for a day. All I know is that I was in the lobby trying to take a rest, and then I heard some horrific screeching and screaming from those... things." I pointed to the platform, but I didn't dare look at it. "Shit just happened after that, okay? Call me a wuss, call me an asshole, call me a freak, whatever. I probably deserve it. But dammit, I don't deserve to almost die!"

Who could look at someone else in the face after that sort of admission? I sure as hell couldn't. My spine, tired of trying to holding my useless body up, withered and gave up, and I found myself drooped and staring at my feet with my hands in my pockets. Too ashamed to look her in the eye, yet too weak to walk out.

A soft, feminine hand pulled my head back up. A mellower, more caring woman's face looked back.

"I didn't say that you deserved to be hurt," she said. She smiled and then shook her head. "But it's not fair to label them as vicious unthinking animals, either. Look, I think we'll just got off on the wrong foot. You weren't seriously hurt and neither were the lizards, and that's good enough. We can put all this behind us, all right?"

Put it behind us, she says. I didn't know about that. I didn't have a desire to make peace with dangerous animals, but neither did I like head injuries. It was a wash.

Arlene rocked shoulders when I didn't respond. "Hey, you okay?"

"Oh, ah." I snapped out it. "I'm just trying to wrap my head around these... whatever these things are."

"Isian lizards."

I thought I might have misheard her, at first. Then, incredulity came. I expected her to holler an "April Fools!" or something. Surely, this woman was taking me for some sort of gullible fool. But it was February and she was serious.

"Isian lizards?" I said. "You mean the Isian lizard?"

"Yep," she said with a nod. "Exactly those."

"I don't believe you."

"You don't have to believe me. You just have to believe your eyes."

I was still expecting a "February Fools." Instead, with her hand still on my shoulder, she coaxed me down from the steps and started moving me closer to the platform.

I was a kid when the tabloids started running pieces on the great Isian beasts about two decades ago. A bunch of hicks (alien menaces seemed to target only hillbillies) first spotted them in the wild in some bummy wilderness. You know how it goes: some redneck saw a deer or something out in the woods, tried to shoot it, and then wrote a manifesto on how the government had a hidden mutant laboratory buried in some extinct volcano in the forest. The usual conspiracy stuff, and it wasn't even that original. Normally, people would nod in polite understanding, give the hick a warm glass of milk, and let him go back to his room and go to sleep with his shotgun.

The media moguls, apparently starved for viewership, played the goddamned thing for all it was worth. "MYSTERIOUS ISIAN LIZARDS: EXTRATERRESTRIALS OR GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY?" the headlines would say. The answer, of course, was "both." The embellishments got pretty wild, where the government supposedly had a top-secret scheme involving E.T.s, genetic engineering black projects, and a plot to create a one-world government using an army of mutated lizard creatures. At the peak, the story of the Isian lizard rivaled the extra-normal traditions of Bigfoot, Roswell, and Bob Dole, except without the staying power. In a couple months, the tabloids readily forgot them in lieu of the latest celebrity divorce. And thus, the Isians were doomed to be no more than a paranormal fad destined for obscurity underneath the Loch.

I was about six or seven at the time though, so I didn't care. They published some blurry, obviously doctored pictures and videos of dinosaur-looking creatures though, and I thought they looked pretty cool. I fucking loved dinosaurs.

Don't get me wrong, cryptozoology and conspiracies are all fine and good. They keep the simple-minded and intellectually lazy occupied with a purpose. Had the Isians stayed as fiction, then I could've spared my intelligence. Yet here they were, Arlene's so-called "Isian lizards!" She wanted me to believe this? Was I supposed to nod my head and accept this? Fuck me, I wasn't ready to live in a world where the tabloids were credible.

Under the circumstances, my engineer-trained logic begged me to keep skeptical and restrain myself for the sake of rationality. My eyes, however, told me to look at the goddamn platform where gigantic white lizards were sleeping on.

The two creatures, identical in size, shape, and appearance, were slightly smaller than a man. Surprisingly sinewy limbs supported their slender bodies, but they were taut like a marathon runner's legs. The webbed feet of the hind limbs had three toes, each ending in curved talons that I could imagine would be ideal for slicing through flesh. But not more ideal than those jagged, but well ordered, rows of teeth they bared from their open mouths.

A frill decorated around their tapered heads with lengths of spines supporting an opaque membrane between them. Pointed ears stood alert on the sides of their heads, and they seemed to flicker about their senses despite being asleep. On the opposite end, a long tail attached at their rumps and coiled around their bodies a couple times before ending in a narrow flare. Each tail was easily twice as long as their actual bodies.

Very fine, white scales coated their bodies and produced a hazy shimmer from the light. They would have remained invisible had I not specifically sought to discover them; from a distance, the scales seemed to form a single skin that bound their hides. The strangest decoration, though, were the blue markings on their skin. The azure lined parts of their throat, the back of the calves of their hind legs, across the torso and sides, and along their tails in a thin line. Not exactly effective predatory camouflage, I could imagine.

Arlene continued to guide my closer to them. I hesitated and tried to dig my feet in. But at the same time, I was curious. The curiosity only grew the longer I observed them. We finally stopped just a meter away from the creatures.

"Isians," I said. "I don't believe it."

"Then maybe you should try reevaluating your beliefs," said Arlene.

"But they're lizards. Isian-goddamned-lizards."

"If it makes it easier for you to swallow, then maybe you'd like to know that they're not actually lizards."

"Pardon?"

"It's a misnomer, really. They look like lizards, but they're not reptiles at all."

"I a tale, a snout, and scales. Sure looks like a reptile to me."

"It's all superficial. From what we've gathered, they're not related to reptiles in any evolutionary sense. What you're seeing here is likely a product of convergent evolution."

"Okay... so what are they, then?"

She shrugged. "We're not exactly sure, really. That's one of the many things we're trying to discover."

These revelations got more bizarre the more I received them. First, I find strange creatures in the lab with no explanation as to how or why. Then, I discover that these were the mythical Isians of conspiracy lore. Now, a freaking biologist tells me she has no idea what they actually were. Perhaps those hicks were onto something all along.

I didn't try to pry any more details from Arlene. As it always seemed to be, I served myself better by being ignorant. At least I could imagine the answers myself. However dishonest self-delusions may be, it was at least comforting.

One of the creatures made a noise and startled me backwards. I bumped into Arlene, who then clasped her hands on my shoulders and steadied me. The creature, eyes still closed, stretched, adjusted itself, and yawned. It then curled back up on its side and went back to sleep.

Arlene rocked my shoulders a bit and said, "Beautiful, aren't they?"

"A couple of bloodthirsty beasts. Yes, very beautiful." My forehead began to throb again.

"Don't tell me you're still sore over that."

"Oh no, not at all. Because I really do hate my life and wished something would just end it all by cracking open my skull."

Suddenly, she gripped me and moved me even closer to the platform, and then shoved me down until I was eye level with the Isians. "Look at the tail, near the end," she said, pointing. "See that?"

Confused over her intentions, I obeyed, but I couldn't find whatever it was she wanted me to discover. Her pointing became more insistent as did her grip on my shoulder. Eventually, I found it: a sort of spike that extended a few centimeters out near the end of an Isian's tail.

"That pointed thing?" I said. "What about it?"

"That 'thing' is the Jacobs stub. It's a defensive mechanism made from tissue that's far stronger than bone. You were hit by that. I've seen them dent sheet metal with their tails. Steel. Your skull is nothing to it."

She then grabbed my cheeks and pointed my head to one of their slacked jaws, and said, "And see in there? Those are venomous fangs on the top of their mouths. One bite delivers enough neurotoxin to kill a human more than a hundred times over. And they can bite many times."

Finally, she pulled me back up, turned me around to face her, and jabbed a finger onto my chest.

"So Lyle, if they really, really, wanted to kill, do you think that you'd still be alive right now?"

I looked at the Isians again. One of them began yawning, revealing its numerous, razor-sharp teeth that didn't inspire comfort. "No, I guess not."

"That's right." She pointed at my forehead, made a whipping motion, and slapped her hands together near my eyes. "Because, if they wanted to really hurt you, your head would be in a hundred bloody pulps right now." She clasped her hand into a ball in front of my face and then popped it open to mimic an explosion. "Boom."

"I..."

"But your skull is still holding that useless brain of yours, isn't it? That's because they attacked with just enough force to incapacitate you. Knock you down, stop you. But not kill."

Arlene's voice had become loud and breathless. I thought it best to say nothing.

"And furthermore, if the situations were reversed, would you have shown the same restraint? I don't think so! You would have probably killed them without any hesitation. You, your friends, everyone. All of them!" She pointed around the room at imaginary defendants. "So who's the 'bloodthirsty beasts' now, Lyle? If you really want to hunt down the dangerous predators of the while, you should look at your own mangy human colleagues!"

We stood watching each other in silence. I didn't want to move until I was sure she was calm. The Isians had remained asleep for the entire time.

"Well, I should take my lunch now," I finally said. Lunch was almost over.

Now it was her turn to remain silent.

"Could I get you anything? Some water or coffee? Maybe you should get something to eat too."

She turned away and pulled back her chair so she could sit. "No, I'm fine, thank you. I have to make sure these guys are okay." Her voice was plain and even.

I nodded and started up the stairs as Arlene continued her observation of the creatures. When I came back, they were all gone.

Chapter 2.2

There are some things in life that you simply take as it is. These are the inarguable, the universal, and the eternal truths that you must accept as part of the greater human experience. Ben Franklin once wrote, "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Old Ben had those two right, of course. But even his timeless wisdom didn't prevent him from missing one: the complete idiocy of your bosses.

I worked for Tetra proper for over seven years. And before, I was an intern while I was a young college kid. Over those years, my relationship with the company had run through the mountains, the valleys, the plateaus, the mesas, the hills, and all other sort of bullshit topography. I've had disagreements with the company and my managers, yes. Friction between bosses and the workforce just happen in our business--in any business. Even God himself couldn't keep some of his employees up in Heaven Incorporated completely happy, and they eventually left to form a rival company. It was the natural order of the universe.

Like any relationship, these spats were fairly harmless, even perhaps beneficial. It kept people honest with one another. So long as our bosses remained rational, we could forgive their occasional executive gaffes. I'd fume at an insult some manager inflicted upon me, brood in angst for a day or two, perhaps call upon some dark and ancient voodoo curse if the case was particularly serious, and then forget it ever happened. For what it's worth, Tetra never gave me any evidence to completely doubt its competency.

That was, until now.

Bringing in uncultured animals was one thing, and I would have not taken an issue with that. After all, the company hired Mark Ellis. However, bringing in uncultured and dangerous animals was something else completely. I take exception when, not one, but two highly vicious beasts are paraded around like pets in my workplace. These weren't Grandma's sweet little predators, either--the kind that preferred Kitty Chow to human flesh. No, they already proved they would hurt people I care about. And also me.

I honestly didn't appreciate being an audience volunteer in a cage with Tetra's pet lions. In the circus, at least, you had popcorn and coke, which are generally delicious.

Imagine how I felt when I learned that these savage beasts were some sort of honored guests courtesy of our Tetran overlords.

I wasn't the only one sharing those sentiments. My fellow colleagues all had similar reactions. Being the boss of the labs where the creatures had holed in, Mark had the most to say.

"You know Lyle," he said to me while I was settling into my station the following day, "if they told me we were gonna get a bunch of fucking animals in the lab, I would've brought a gun. I'm serious, I would have brought it. If I'd known, I would've gotten your back that night. Boom! Things would've been different. You wouldn't have got knocked around, there would be no goddamned animals in my lab, and we wouldn't have this problem right now. Right in their heads. Defense of my people, company wouldn't be able to do shit about it. I used to go hunting all the time with my dad. Bullet never misses."

I huddled inside my station and tried to bootstrap my terminal into the Alie. I didn't care to remind him that, by his own admission, he hadn't gone hunting since he discovered masturbation. It was the start of a new day, and I didn't care for any more drama from anyone or anything else. I couldn't be bothered to worry about it because, frankly, Tetra didn't pay me enough to. I was already behind in my workload, especially since I didn't accomplish anything worth a damn yesterday due to preoccupation with those lizards.

Small comfort, then, of having a lizard-free lab that morning. We came in and found it empty, and I couldn't be happier.

Tap, tap, tap. That's all I wanted to hear. I wanted the keyboards to fill the room with that incessant droning until it clogged my head as white noise. It numbs the senses into complacency, as empty as a corporate drone should be. Tap, tap, tap.

It was maybe three hours and change before I took a breather. I stretched on my seat and took my eyes off the screen just enough to glance at the arena. Still empty as I cared it to be. If fate would be kind for once, it would stay that way until I could get home and refresh my resume.

And then fate answered with an inhuman shriek echoing from beyond the doors.

The distant echoes drafted through the room and froze everyone still, and it left in its wake a chilled silence. The stillness only attenuated the rapid claps that ran through hall beyond the lab doors. Everyone looked to the doors as claps became louder and clearer. Then, it stopped. Those next few minutes stretched into a proverbial eternity.

There wasn't a question to what it was, but no one dared say anything. Mark finally slapped his desk and stormed up the steps.

"Fucking beasts," he muttered. He nearly reached the doors when another cry froze him in his steps.

Before anyone could pray for him, the door burst open and a white flurry devoured the foreman.

Mark was a very large man. A very large and a very strong man. He had a successful run in his college football team as a linebacker, steamrolling lesser opponents to the state championship. His old nickname "The Dumpmaster" was apparently well deserved (in more than one way, I suppose). He even did some amateur weightlifting back in his younger days. Point is, it took a lot to knock over Mark Ellis, some massive quantity that defied conventional mathematical notation.

Imagine how stunned I was to see his body crumpled on the floor after something bowled him over that could have not been more than a third his weight.

With his back planted firmly to the floor, Mark wore a look that seemed astonished at his own incapacitation. Everyone stood for a better look at the scene, but no one attempted to help. The ones closest actually moved away, and for good reason. The perpetrator was sitting on his stomach.

Atop Mark's abdomen, the Isian sat with its hind legs folded to its sides and its forelimbs pressed against his chest, a perfect position to stop him from getting back up. Its sinuous tail swished side-to-side and slapped against his legs and feet. It parted its jaws just enough to allow its tongue to make a series of piercing clicks that echoed through the lab like gunshots.

Another other lizard came into the lab, positioned next to them, and watched with its legs spread apart and its tail undulating in the air. It was an unnerving and predatory stance, one that you expect a killer to use on a cornered victim.

Mark finally rolled his eyes back to sense, only to find a reptilian face staring back. He didn't move as the creature came in close to his neck and took a deep sniff, maybe to inspect the quality of its prey. His scent apparently offended it, and it started making even louder clicks, followed by a trill from its throat. The other creature mimicked it with similar sounds. The clicks and shrieks mixed together into a racket. The creatures bobbed their heads together as they cried out.

The clamor stopped at a peak, and the lizards stared at Mark. His eyes opened wide when they produced a low rumble with their mouths open and teeth exposed. The lizard on Mark's chest placed its muzzle close to his face and opened its mouth wide, exposing an array of vicious teeth. This was it, the beginning of the end. I wanted to turn away black it out. I knew there was nothing we could do to save him, and my stomach churned at the thought of it. But I continued watching, because at least I'd know when the Isians starting sinking their teeth into him. Hopefully, we could run out and save ourselves while they were busy tearing him apart.

Mark squirmed beneath the creature, but it was too strong for him to overcome. Its fanged muzzle was millimeters away from face. I could hear my own breath lapse in my lungs. And then in a snap, the unthinkable happened.

It licked him.

The lizard on his chest eagerly lapped at his face, all traces of the menacing growls and posturing gone, and the other joined in. I watched, shocked in disbelief. This was the most unbelievable sight I've seen yet. Had the creature bit into his throat and tore out his trachea, I wouldn't have been surprised. Nauseous, sick, and traumatized, but not shocked. But this show of... affection? I couldn't believe it. My sensibilities refused to believe it.

The sane, if not altruistic, part of my mind hoped they were merely tasting him before the kill.

Eventually, the creatures had enough of Mark's manly taste, and the Isian on his chest got off and allowed the bewildered foreman to stand. He stood in place for a moment. He looked at the lizards sitting next to him, their tails swishing around, and then at us. A scowl crawled on his face. "What are you guys looking at? Get back to work, all of you!" he yelled.

We quickly went back to our business and the creatures continued theirs. No sooner had Mark gotten up and stumbled down the steps, the Isians went hog-wild in the lab. Like little children or, more appropriately, a pack of wolves, they ran around the room, chased each other, knocked over equipment, and generally made a nuisance. Repeatedly, one would chase the other around the lab a few times and then to a corner, shriek, knock down a piece of equipment, and then continue the chase in reverse. It went on for what seemed like hours. More than once, they scaled the lab walls to bat at the lighting, their sharp claws digging pockmarks onto the panels.

All the while, Mark sat at his desk, visibly fuming at the show. For all his previous bravado, he did nothing to stop it. Whether it because he had an executive order not to or because he was too frightened, I wasn't sure.

The Isians continued their animalistic parade. Biting, growling, yelping, groping... it was all a display of simple minds. I still couldn't believe that Tetra had a vested interest in them. At least, I was grateful they didn't have any bloodlust that day.

---

Eventually, monotony allowed me to tune out the ruckus and concentrate on my work. Lunch came and rows of engineers streamed out from the lab faster than usual. I decided to stay in to work since I had too much work to afford any more interruptions. The lizards helped by falling asleep on the projector after a morning of killing energy. I figured I wouldn't have too much a problem them.

Mark stopped by my station before he left.

"Hey, you taking out for lunch or what?"

"No, I got too much work to do," I said without looking off the screen.

"That's good. We've been behind quite a bit."

"Tell me something I don't know."

He grumbled. "Look, I'll be square with you," he said in a low voice that gave me pause. "I just got word from higher up saying that we have too much people in Secondary. Too much employees and not enough in the department budget or whatever. Point is, I have to fire some people in a few days."

I stopped my work and turned to him. He stared at me. It was obvious what he meant.

"Look, you know I like you, Lyle. You're a good worker and a good man. I wouldn't even think of letting you if I had the choice. But that shit doesn't matter to my bosses, you know? I can keep you on, sure, but when my performance review comes in next week, all they're gonna see is that I kept someone on that's dead last in his work queue. That ain't gonna look good for me, either."

"Christ Mark, of course I'm behind. Look at this thing." I pointed to my battered forehead. "If Tetra's so concerned with work output, maybe they should rethink their goddamned pets. It's insane up here."

He looked at the Isians. "You don't have to fucking tell me, buddy. Those fucking animals are ruining shit for everyone else too. But I still gotta let some go, and right now you're on top of the list. You know damned well as I do that management won't care why."

I folded my hands over my face. This couldn't be happening! Over seven years at the company, and now I'm going to get the axe for one bad week while a pair of stupid fucking animals run loose over my lab. I sighed and stared at my hands.

"What could I do, Mark? What could I do to make this work?"

"You're behind twenty-four units."

"Jesus Christ. What, you expect me to do all that in one fucking day?"

"Just do what you can. Working hard will still get you points. I'll try to talk to my bosses and see if I can get some goddamn sense into them. Don't let these animals wreck your shit. You're worth way more than them." He patted my shoulder. "All right, buddy?"

He left me to stare at an empty screen.

Mark's reassurance was too little and too late. Those animals had already wrecked my shit. The attack that knocked me out, the engineering shutdown... these were all because of them. Everything. And I was going to pay for it with my job.

I wasn't going to lose my job, goddammit! I've worked too long and too hard at this damn place to go out like that, especially not by a bunch of stupid fucking animals. At this point, I didn't care if they brought in a hundred more of those things. Tetra can do whatever it goddamn wanted with its ludicrous piles of money, and if that meant wasting it away on some barely intelligent life forms, then so be it. That was their problem, not mine. But I will not lose my well-being, not from these creatures, not from Tetra, and not from anything else. With a reawakened determination, I started tearing through the work queue like a rusty hacksaw. Tap, tap, tap!

Hey, you know, I actually believed my own hype for a minute. But that burst of emotional determination couldn't drag along that left-brained logic engineering school pounded into me, and I quickly realized I was kidding myself. On a very good day, I would be lucky if I finished eleven units with overtime. Twenty-four units? Fuck. Me. My days were numbered. Well at this point, more like hours.

Despite the grim realization, I continued to work like a madman. I still didn't want to give those Isians the satisfaction of beating me. If I was to go down, I'm going down in a blaze of engineering glory.

Tap, fucking tap.

In trying my damndest to burn myself out, I didn't notice the hot breath that breathed down my neck. I paused for a moment, enough for the heat to chill my spine. And when I felt the presence of a body lurking behind me, the hairs of neck left bulges as they tried to squirm away from my skin.

Don't.

My eyes strained in their sockets trying to fish an image from the corners. The chill froze my neck in place.

Don't turn around.

I caught blurred glimpses of slitted pupils, flaring nostrils, and sharp teeth looking up at me.

Don't fucking move.

My head and torso got the message, but my stupid legs twitched up off the floor, causing the chair to rotate and take my hapless body along with it. To my chagrin, I began rotating toward a slack-jawed reptilian face that stared with unblinking scrutiny.

Dear God, don't fucking move!

I tucked my legs in and gripped the seat until my hands pained. The Isian continued to examine me with its unblinking eyes. The slit pupils seemed as if they were sizing me up, to determine what resistance I would offer once the creature decided to hunt me down to satiate its hunger. They stalked atop a head that made only the slightest movement to keep me within sight. A side curiosity discovered that the creature had blue eyes. Strange, but I didn't care to appreciate it.

Am I supposed to stay still? Should I stare back or look away? Or wait, perhaps I should play dead instead? Predators won't eat dead things, right? I could try playing dead. I was close enough to it, anyway.

While I argued with myself, something caught the creature's eyes, and it cocked its head and turned it slightly past my side. It tuned its gaze away from me and toward my terminal. I had been working on a frequency distribution chart for some bullshit statistic that now escaped me. I had tabulated the data with bright colors so they would stand out, and the hues must have caught its attention.

In one quick, startling move, it hoisted its forelimbs off the floor so it could steady itself on its hind legs with its foreclaws on the table. In reflex, I coiled into myself and caused the chair to roll backwards. The Isian, now paying its attention exclusively to my terminal, gave the keyboard a cursory sniff before it smashed its claws into the keys. The terminal whined with error beeps, and the lizard pressed its nose onto the screen and clicked its tongue in response.

While it occupied itself with the bright lights and loud sounds of the terminal, I shuffled my chair backwards and away. The Isian was completely oblivious in its quest to bash the keyboard.

I hadn't moved far when I crashed into something, which nearly bounced me off the seat. I planted my feet onto the floor and steadied myself. My nails dug deeper into the cushions when I made a white-knuckled realization. There's two of them, you idiot! I closed my eyes and prayed that I hadn't run over its feet or tail or some other soft body part. But I didn't. Or maybe if I did, the creature didn't care. I felt the light swish of its tail against my calf, then gone. I pried an eyelid open and saw it join its partner at the terminal. In no time, it too was leaping in joy when it took a turn at pounding the keyboard.

I hopped off the chair and ran up the stairs, out the door, and through the halls. I didn't bother wait for my breath to follow me. The lizards left me the opportunity to escape, and I took it. Thank God for colored tables and harsh error sounds! I made it panting to the security checkpoint where a security guard dutifully ignored me.

I rested and, after a moment or two, came to my senses. Those damned things were ruining my work queue! It was bad enough I was about to get fired for being behind, but now those stupid animals were sabotaging the rest of the engineering data. This would totally look great on my work references, just the thing I needed to find another job!

I lingered at the station and darted my eyes between the lobby and the engineering labs. Hesitantly, I waddled back. This was going to be painful.

I thought of ways to distract the animals. I could yell at them, but that would probably just annoy them. I could borrow a broom or some implement from the janitorial closet, but Summit replaced the bulk of the sanitation staff with robots last year, and fat chance of anyone remembering where the keys to those closets were. Besides, shooing them with a broom would just likely promote biting. Maybe the chemicals guys would have, I don't know, fucking nerve gas or something. When I peeked into SE-2, I had a hundred ideas but not a lick of sense or courage for any of them.

I sat at someone's station on the outermost ring. There wasn't really anything I could do. Besides the possibility of bodily harm, these things were Tetra's personal pets. Antagonizing the lizards would cost me more than just my job. Broken bodies could be mended, being blackballed less so, especially since I needed a job to pay the medical bills. I crumpled into the seat, and my face sought solace in my hands.

Fuck Isian lizards. Fuck Tetra. Fuck Summit. Fuck me.

I don't know why I bothered looking back to my station, seeing as how I was doomed regardless. Morbid curiosity, I guess. Watching an unfurling trainwreck is a human diversion cherished since the dawn of civilization, even if said wreck was your own. Especially if it was your own. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want to hang yourself. Cathartic stuff.

So I watched my station. And what I saw shocked me.

One of them lay on the desk while the other tapped on the keyboard. It wasn't the brainless mashing from earlier. It was ordered, deliberate, and... intelligent, somehow. And on the screen, rather than the hundreds of red error tapes I expected, I saw a clean and ordered stream of data.

I lost to disbelieving curiosity and crept back to the terminal with my gaze locked to terminal screen. I was hovering just a meter away from the lizards, but my incredulity bullied the terror away.

They were doing the work. My work!

Page after page after page of data screamed through the screen under the Isian's orchestration, its claws now a virtual blur. Every so often, the one on the table would make a clicking sound, and the other would bob its head in response. The data kept on flowing and the lizard kept on tapping. It didn't stop to rest or to think. It just tore through them one-by-one like Jack the Engineering Ripper.

Fifty minutes later, at the tail of the lunch hour, the Isians finally became bored with the terminal and went back to the arena to sleep.

I sat down. Absentmindedly, I tapped on the keys to bring up the engorged work review list. I paged through each item trying to find errors. Hoping to find errors. None. Pristine. Perfection, just perfect. It was incredible, but that's not what stunned me into catatonia.

They had finished fifteen units in less than an hour.

---

The sun's setting rays painted the sky through the remnants of yesterday's storm. The dense air squeezed the light until it glowed, neon streaking through the orange sky. The storm left behind clumps of wandering clouds and small refuges of puddles collected in the boughs of the courtyard, too stubborn to evaporate. Most of the fresh water and its natural, nasal-tickling scents had washed away into the sewers.

I sat on a bench in the courtyard and watched the bloated clouds swim. They all looked like whales. That's the only thing clouds could be, really. Just lumbering marine mammals trying to swallow the sun. I didn't usually have the opportunity to wave the sun goodbye when it left the earth.

I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the absurd irony. Those things that nearly killed my career today where the ones that rescued it. In any other case, I'd mark it up as an even trade and go home. But they were animals. Those slobbering, naked, growling beasts that had knocked me out and trashed the lab.

But the system didn't lie. Fifteen units, gobbled up like candy. It wasn't humanly possible. But apparently, it was cakewalk for giant lizards.

It was a hard swallow.

Everything started making sense. Of course the company had calculated their interest with these Isians--they didn't become the multi-billion-dollar behemoth by being mostly stupid. Why do you think the top brass would bother making a visit in less than a day's notice? Why would they shut down operations for an entire day? Why allow these creatures to run free through the labs? These creatures hid something incredible, something I had never seen before.

"Never judge a person by his appearance," they repeatedly drilled into you stupid childhood brain. No one ever said to apply that dictum to lizards, as well. Was I supposed to? Mom never told me to.

God, maybe those conspiracy nuts were right after all. Secret government alien genetic engineering mutant project? I could begin to see it.

I got up and stretched. This was too much. Whatever these Isians were, I knew I wanted to meet them. I didn't know what I wanted to do after I did, or even if they would let me, but I guessed I could try. I had a feeling we'd be seeing each other an awful lot from now on, and God knows I should try to start the relationship anew. If not now then eventually, so I mind as well get it over with. Something tugging at me head told me I owed them that. I blame my mother and her insistence on good manners and that other sort of nonsense.

I went to the maple tree at the center of the courtyard. Earlier, I had seen the Isians horsing around it. The tree had an odd history about it. It grew proudly on the grounds before Summit was even an embryo in Tetra's womb, rooted among its neighbors on undeveloped land. The company came in, bought the parcel, and started razing everything, as you do, to seed the foundation of their glorious next-generation research campus. The earthmovers felled all the arboreal inhabitants (because there wasn't anything "next-generation" about trees) but inexplicably left the single maple intact. Urban legend says the tree destroyed the treads of three dozers, and the construction crew got tired and just went around it. And it just stood there ever since, defiant like a woody William Wallace, as Summit's single bastion of nature growing through the concrete, steel, and glass. They say you could still see the battle scars on its trunk where the machines failed to knock it down.

Keeping the maple company was a large boulder unearthed during Summit's construction. Or it might have been a giant dollop of concrete, no one's really sure.

There, one of the lizards sprawled on the sunny side of the boulder with its eyes closed, like a pet reptile warming itself on a hot rock. The sunset lit its scales in orange flames that shimmered like a gossamer sheen. Its limbs stretched across the rocky surface, and its tail trailed down and curled next to the rock's base. The lizard's nostrils closed and flared gently as it snored. If it had some fur covering those ghastly-looking scaled, it would almost seem cute.

I moved under the tree and brought out my sack lunch, still uneaten. I rummaged through it and took out an apple. If the lizard woke up, I needed a peace offering. I didn't know how much a single apple was worth to an Isian, but it was still edible. I couldn't understand the lizard and it probably couldn't understand me, but we both the universal language of food.

No sooner had I taken the apple out, the Isian stirred, groaned, and opened its blue eyes. It blinked a few times and moved its head, the chin still planted on the rock, to me. It blinked again, gathered its limbs together, and raised its head up. Not wishing to startle it, I inched toward the rock in deliberate steps. Unblinking Isian eyes tracked me along the way.

I reached the foot of the rock and held up the apple for the lizard to see. Its eyes immediately snapped to the fruit. I waved the apple around, and the Isian bobbed its head to follow it like a magnet. Satisfied I got its attention to the right thing, I placed the apple to the ground next to the rock. The lizard crawled around the rock to peer down to it.

I slowly backed away and said, "Here, for you."

The Isian didn't waver from the apple. It brought its body off the rock and stood on all fours. It arched its back and stretched, and then it hopped off the rock with a swish of its tail. On the ground, it quickly found the apple. Tentatively, as if unsure of the offering, it nosed into the apple and sniffed. It dug in closer and pivoted around it to smell from other directions, stopping after a cursory lick from its thin, pink tongue. Apparently satisfied, it nuzzled the apple, brought its jaws around it, and devoured the fruit in one gulp. It didn't even bite--it took the entire apple into its maw and crushed the thing with its powerful jaws. Rivulets of juice trickled down its blue chin, which the lizard licked away along with the white apple bits that clung on its lips.

Finished with the apple, the Isian turned around and brought its attention back to me. It made a high-pitched chirping sound. It sounded like a bird's, which confused me because it was a far cry from what you'd expect from a reptile's vocabulary. Perhaps it was a sparrow in its stomach screaming for freedom.

The lizard cocked its head slightly and chirped again, as if expecting me to understand. Since I didn't speak "Giant Lizard," I had no idea of its intentions, so I backed away some more. Maybe it was thank-you chirp. Perhaps it was a territorial call warning me to leave. Or hell, a mating call for all I knew.

The Isian chirped once more, and then came closer.

It crawled on all four of its legs, and although it barely stood higher than my thighs, it still intimidated me. I continued shuffling back. It chirped and took another step. This repeated a couple more times until I bumped into the tree and found myself without anywhere else to back up to. The Isian came until it almost nosed at my leg. I huddled and squirmed against the tree, preparing to run if I needed to, but the lizard then moved its snout to the lunch bag I held in my right hand.

I finally understood, so I reached in and pulled out another apple, a green Granny Smith. Again, I held the apple, on uneven hands, for the Isian to see. I waved it for attention as I did before, and I planned to set it the ground, but then Isian did something that startled me. I fell and my ass kissed the floor when it got up on its fucking hind legs and snatched the apple away with its foreclaws. Jesus Christ! The lizard showed no trouble balancing itself on two legs as it fondled the apple in its claws. I sat on the ground in disbelief at the towering creature.

This time, the lizard dispensed with formalities and stuffed the apple straight into its jaws. It polished off the second apple and landed back on all fours to crawl over to my lunch bag, which I still gripped in my hand. It nosed at it again, so I dumped the rest of its contents to the ground. I shuffled away across the grass, leaving the hungry lizard to rummage through the pile. It ignored the can of soda and quickly found the ham sandwich. It sniffed at it eagerly, shrieked at what it found, and hammered a series of sharp clicks.

It seemed placated now, but I didn't want to wait around when it realized I had run out of food. I was about to get up and leave when a branch struck me on the head. The tree rustled above, and a brown maple leaf fell on my eyes when I looked up to investigate. I shook it away and, when I looked back up, met with a pair of slitted blue eyes.

Goddammit, Lyle! There's two of them! Fucking two, you dumb motherfucker!

The second creature, probably roused by the calls from the first, climbed down the tree with the grace of a squirrel, and I found myself trapped between two reptiles. Fat chance of escaping now if shit goes wrong.

Fortunately, the new Isian ignored me and went over to the other lizard, who was busy breathing in the sandwich with its nostrils plastered into the plastic wrapping. The second lizard saw the sandwich, bobbed its head and chirped, and then snatched the sandwich away while the other was still in mid-sniff. This didn't sit well with the sniffer, and its happy-looking face quickly dissolved into a teeth-bared scowl. It spread its hind legs and elevated its rump in an aggressive posture. The thief ignored it and started pressing the sandwich into its own nose.

One lizard was clearly ready for blood, yet the other sat like a fool with its eyes closed in bliss and a sandwich pressed into its face. Oh God, there was going to be blood. Thankfully, not mine, but that was only slightly worse.

"Hey... hey guy," I called out. "I think you better give that sandwich back to him." Lord knows what the hell I thought that was supposed to accomplish, but it was the only thing I could think of. To my utter amazement and confusion, the growling stopped. And now I had a pair of reptilians eyes trained to me.

I cursed myself. I had the perfect opportunity to leave and go home, only to squander it on some meaningless gesture. It was like calling out to pack of wolves. They're not going to understand you, you idiot, why did you try to reason with them? Now they're surely going to expect more food, and if they found out I didn't have any, they might decide I would be a good, meaty replacement. Something that can't keep its mouth shut is something that deserves to get eaten.

I called my bet and went for broke, even though I didn't know how to gamble worth a damn. I turned away and paced away from them. They won't follow, I hoped. They won't follow. They won't follow. They won't follow...

"I'm a she, not he!"

I froze. I looked around, trying to find whoever called out. No one else lingered in the courtyard with us. No one could have possibly said anything. But there was definitely a voice--I heard it! I looked back at the area of the tree. The Isians were still staring at me.

They couldn't. Could they? No, it couldn't have been. I thought for a moment. It was too bizarre to consider. It must have been my imagination. But... I definitely heard something!

Once again, I ignored my sensibilities and went cautiously back to the lizards.

"Ex-excuse me?" I stammered, not knowing what I wanted to expect but hoping for nothing.

"She! I'm a girl, not a boy!"

---

Why was I surprised? How dumb did I have to be? Observation: watch these things barrel through, in one hour, work that I struggled to finish in a day, as if the terminal was but a plaything. All right, noted. Now, I also heard their chirps and calls, which mean they have vocal cords or some other noise-making apparatus, yes? So what's a reasonable hypothesis to make?

Definitely wasn't Isian speech, I'll tell you that.

I just stood as a gaping, stupefied imbecile that hesitated to accept what he saw and heard. I guess, in my mind, I wanted to cling to the thing that still gave me superiority: the spoken word. It's the thing that separates us from the beasts. Our past, our present, our future, our rich stable of cabbie swear words, it's all here. Human civilization was founded on the word, and I guess I needed to latch onto it. I'd believed the Isians' aptitude didn't extend beyond the confines of the sciences, just uncivilized animals that just so happened to be familiar with Bernoulli's principle. That postulate collapsed into a fiery wreck, and my last shred of dominance fell with it. Predisposed bias--I'd make a horrible fucking scientist

On the other side, the lizards continued staring at me. The second one, the tree dweller, leaned near its partner and seemed to whisper to it, and the other returned with a bob of its head. The first lizard then came closer to me, a few foot lengths away, and sat on the grass.

"Did you understand me?" it drawled in a low voice.

The words choked in the back of my throat and couldn't come out. An uncanny role-reversal. Now I was the stupid, incomprehensible animal.

It spoke again even more slowly, and enunciated every syllable as if speaking to a child. "Do... you... un-der-stand... me?"

After getting no response, it leapt beside me and gave a loud roar that knocked me off my feet. Panicked and on the ground, I blurted out the words the Isian wanted to hear.

"Yes, yes, I understand!"

The Isian scrunched its face together in what I could only describe as a patronizing look. Its eye ridges narrowed, and it bowed its head down to me like a lecturing parent.

"Say it again, but right this time," it said.

"What?"

It snorted and rolled its eyes back. "Say like you did to him." It pointed to the other Isian. "Except call me a girl this time."

It took me a second to understand. The Isian continued to drilling its eyes into me. I turned and waved to the other.

"Ah... right. Uh, you there? I think you should give the sandwich back to... her." I pointed to the subject. "She looks pissed."

The rock-warmer began clacking at the sandwich thief, who then snorted and nosed away the sandwich. The first lizard curled the ends of its mouth up in... a smile? That was the only thing it could have been.

"Thank you!" it said in tone unlike the one it gave earlier, loud and perky. It tilted its head at me. "You're such a silly man!"

Another shocking revelation. What would you expect a lizard's voice to be? Low, raspy, and hissy? Against stereotype, the Isian's words precise and articulate, spoken with a deep and full, yet distinctly feminine, pitch. It was a handsome voice that I could not have expected to come from such a source. Drop a foreign accent atop and it could narrate a nature documentary.

The Isian went to claim its... her prize. She snatched up the sandwich and tore away the wrapping with her teeth. The other lizard looked longingly as the female buried her nose into the bread.

"You always get all the food!" it complained. Again, a rich voice came clear, this one toned deeper. I didn't have to guess at this lizard's sex.

The female ignored him and wolfed the sandwich down to crumbs on the grass and on her lips. She licked them clean and chirped.

I continued to sit on the grass like a beaten combatant. The Isians had triumphed over me once again. They were stronger, smarter, and even spoke better than I did. In the grand pyramid of life, they stood atop of me at a level I couldn't even fathom to scale. Nothing I could do, really, but stay down and prop up my reptilian overlords.

After the female finished the sandwich, she sat on her haunches and waggled her tail like a dog. "Your food was delicious!" she said to me, and then asked the other lizard, "Wasn't it delicious?"

"I wouldn't know because you ate it all."

"Oh, it was so good. You would have loved it."

"You could have let me have that apple."

"The green apple wasn't too good. Not as good as the red one."

"Green ones are good enough."

"But red is better."

"Green, red, yellow, purple. I like apples. You ate all the apples."

"Apples aren't as good as sandwiches. You should have sandwiches."

"I like sandwiches! You ate it!"

"Oh yes. It was so good!"

I could barely catch the dialogue as it ping-ponged back and forth. It went on for a couple minutes as if they had forgotten my presence.

"He should bring more," I heard the female say before she turned back to me. "You should bring food again for tomorrow. And this time, enough for both of us."

"That was my lunch, actually," I said. "I just didn't eat it today."

She squinted her eyes and scratched her blue chin, perhaps deep in thought. She said, "Then you should bring three lunches then!"

"Yes, three!" said the other Isian.

"I'm sure you don't need my food," I said. "Don't they feed you here?"

The female winced and stuck out her tongue in disgust. "Their food is terrible. Smells bad and tastes worse."

"And they have no apples," said the other.

With her eyes closed, the female began swaying her head from side-to-side and waved around her arms and tail. "Sand-wich-es! Sand-wich-es!" she repeated in a singsong voice. The male clicked his tongue and bobbed his head to the words.

"Well..." I started. The Isians stopped and stared at me. "I guess I could bring some food tomorrow. It shouldn't be a problem."

The female jumped and clapped her foreclaws together and cried out, "Yay!" The male chirped in joy.

They grouped around me, and I tensed up in reflex, but they just chirped and clicked their tongues. One of them came close and purred. That's what it was, a throaty, reverberating, purr that outperformed a feline's. Surely, these guys could send any number of animals to the unemployment line--me included. I shuddered at the thought of being obsolete.

And certainly, the Isians didn't seem to mind. After expending their excitement over the future sandwiches, they stretched on the grass alongside me with their bodies twisted to match the remaining slivers of sunlight casted through the horizon's shadows. I remained sitting, just observing them as they lounged like lazy lizards. I tried to come to terms with them all. God, Isians. Urban legend? Engineering savants? Crude animals easily amused with cheap ham sandwiches? All of it? I had to observe and study them to try to make sense of what they were. I stared until the earth blanked out the sun.

They stirred up when the shadow overwhelmed their spots.

"Hey," I said when they started getting up. "I want to thank you guys for doing my work today."

One of the Isians peered with a lazy eye at me, unaware of my words. The other gave a yawn that gaped its mouth open enough to swallow a football.

"In the lab this afternoon," I said, "you guys finished my work for me. I really appreciate it."

The female came to her feet and stretched her legs with an arched back. She sauntered over on all fours and laid herself down in front of me. "What are you talking about, you silly human?"

"You guys of you worked on my terminal during lunch," I said. She was still confused, so I mimicked them pounding on the keyboard. "You know? In SE-2? Where you guys slept all day? Where you tackled and licked Mark?"

Her eyes opened wide and whistled. "Oh, that lab! I remember you, now!"

Remember me now? She didn't realize who I was all this time?

The female Isian waved her head at me. "Your terminal was so fun!" She patted her companion's side. "Wasn't it fun?"

"Very fun," he replied.

"Well, thank you for choosing mine," I said.

"We got bored," the male said. "There wasn't anything else to do."

"And yours was the only one unlocked," said the female. "And it was colorful!"

"Very colorful!"

I shook my head in amazement. They really were amused with bright lights and loud sounds. My mind boggled trying to reconcile the observations.

The female smiled at me. "You're so nice letting us play with your toy. I wish we met you earlier. Unlike that horrible man that tried to hurt me that night."

The other Isian snorted. "Oh, I remember him. What a horrible person."

"So bad."

"So mean."

The female came next to me and placed a claw on my shoulder. "He just ran up to me! I had to hit him on the head for him to stop. Then they had to drag him away."

Oh... oh God! They were talking about me! That night when I stayed late for work. I was that "horrible human!"

The lizards were now clicking in a commotion. Maybe I shouldn't say anything, I thought. They barely remembered me from just this afternoon, so what are the chances they would remember several nights back? Not likely, so I continued to sit and hoped to weather it out.

"It's a fact that you can tell who the bad ones are by their smell," the male said.

"No you can't, don't be silly," said the other.

"It's true, though. You can smell it. It's called... what did Arlene call it? Character? Yeah, you can smell character."

The female patted my leg and said, "Tell him it's not true. You can't smell badness. That's stupid."

I shrugged. "I don't think you can."

"Ha! See?" She pointed and stuck her tongue at the other. "Told you."

The male shook his head, clicked his tongue, and pointed at me.

"Look, see him? Just smell that one. He's a good one. If he smells better than that one from the other night, then you'll know I'm right!"

The female narrowed her eyes and frowned at him. "Fine," she said.

She moved around and sat down in front of me. I wasn't sure what she wanted to do, so I remained still. She looked at me for a moment, closed her eyes, and then brought her nose near my chest. She inhaled, her narrow chest contracting to take in a lungful of air. After taking in the breath, she remained motionless in that position with only her nostrils flaring in and out. I quavered a bit trying to remain steady. A smile started forming on her lips, and she released the breath against my chest.

"He smells pretty good, I think." She poked her muzzle onto my chest again. "Very nice smell."

The other Isian chirped. "I was right!"

Still with her eyes clothes, the female lizard took small whiffs of my shirt. "He smells a bit familiar though," she mused in airy voice. "Like something I smelled before."

She continued rubbing her nose on my chest and sniffing in my scent. I didn't have the nerve to try to stop her.

My body was shivering.

Suddenly, she exploded with a shriek and flew backwards with wide eyes.

"You!" she cried. The male looked at me.

"You? Him? What?"

"It's him! Him!"

"Who's him?"

The female made a series of clicks--deep, angry ones like her tongue was taking a jackhammer to her palate. They came in an incomprehensible volley, which the male listened to with perked ears. When it stopped, his eyes opened into blue orbs. He screeched.

"Him!"

They positioned themselves at right angles from me, their hindquarters raised in the air and their heads low to the ground. It was either a defensive or attack position, I didn't know which. Bared teeth and rumbling growls had swallowed their smiles and chirps. The frills around their necks puffed in an angry spread that throbbed like a pounding heartbeat.

I tried to get up, but an ear-splitting shriek planted my ass right back into the dirt. Without the nerve to fend for myself on my feet, I had only hands motioning to try to calm them.

"No guys, wait," I said. "Please, you have it wrong. I'm not horrible."

"So you're not that horrible man?" one of them asked.

"Well, yes that was me, but--"

The rendering growls cut me off. I tried to form the rest of the words, but my mouth dried and my throat knotted into air-choking noose. I dug my heels into the ground and pushed myself back while I kept my hands up in defense. The growling became louder, and a hissing sound began worming through my eardrums. The Isians came closer. And closer.

I tried pushing myself away, but their feet were more nimble than my ass. They came near me. Their open jaws looked ready for the kill.

I pressed my feet down as hard as I could and thrust myself along the ground. Something, probably the tree's root, cracked into my tailbone, and my back collapsed to the grass from the pain. I writhed on the ground in agony. Hot, moist breaths began to chill my ears. I felt them. They were here. This was it. I was going to die now. My body quaked in pain and terror. What I cried out weren't so much words than uncontrolled fear diced up and vomited into the air.

"No! Stop! Please! I don't want to die!"

I felt wetness on my ears. Blood. I was bleeding my life away.

But...

Something compelled me to open my eyes and look up. The Isians stared down, but their menacing faces had disappeared. I felt my ears and rubbed at the wetness. It clung to my fingers, and I brought it on a shaking hand to view. It wasn't blood. It was clear and sticky like... saliva.

I found a single thread of nerve to prop my torso up on my elbows. My voice came up in spastic gasps.

"L-look guys. I'm s-sorry, I'm really sorry. Whatever I did that night, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to attack anyone. P-please... believe me."

One of the Isians twisted its head to its partner, and then to me, and let out a grunt. The other repeated the same.

"Besides," I said, "I was the one that got pegged in the head. See? It still hurts." I pointed to the bruise.

The female slapped her tail to the ground and cried, "Because you scared me!"

"You're the horrible man that scared us!" said the male.

I stretched myself up by the arms to take pressure off the sore tailbone and said, "I'm sorry, I really am. I won't be like that anymore." An idea came to me. "Listen, I'll make it up to you guys, all right? I'll pack in extra sandwiches for you both tomorrow. Sound good?"

The moment I mentioned "sandwiches," the Isians' faces melted, and they bobbed their heads up and down and chirped an earful.

"That sounds good, Mr. Horrible Man!" the male said.

"Please don't call me that," I said.

"Then what do we call you?" the female asked.

"My name is Lyle."

"Lyle?" the male repeated. He flinched his head back and frowned at the disclosure. "That's not a good name."

"No, not good at all," the female said.

I shrugged. "What's a good name, then?"

The lizards looked at each other and exchanged clicks.

"I know!" the female said. "We'll call you Ly-lee!"

"Ly... Lee?" I had to roll the word off my tongue a few times to grasp it. It defied even childhood imagination.

"Yes, Ly-lee. That's a good name, I think."

The male Isian repeated the name like a child discovering a new swear word. They seemed so genuinely proud of the new name that I couldn't refuse.

"Okay, fine. Ly-lee. Call me that, just not Mr. Horrible Man."

"All righty!" they said together.

The night had completely overtaken the sky. The last N-Freight would be leaving soon.

"It's pretty late, guys," I said. "We should probably go home."

"Is it really late?" the male asked the other.

"Seems like it. Maybe we should go back. They'll be worried."

He sighed. "Yeah. It's so boring though. I hate going back there."

"But Secondary is pretty fun."

"Yeah, it is!"

"It's much better than Primary Sigma. Better people too!"

"Why do we have to work there, anyway?"

"Don't know. Oh well. Let's go!"

They duo raced away and disappeared into the evening, leaving me in a pocket of dust and debris. I just sat there, more bewildered than I had ever been since this whole mess started.

3. A belated homecoming.

Chapter 3.1

Before I left for work the next morning, I called Aimee to set up a meeting with Ernest Lefko. He was the one of the heads of the engineering departments at Summit, which included Primary and Secondary.

Ernest was a consummate company man, which you tended to be when you worked at a place for decades and still haven't retired at 72-years-old, but he didn't love the company. He cared for it too much to love it. He was a proud remnant of the "old guard," grizzled veterans who jingled balls of welded titanium in their pants. While most of his fellow soldiers had since faded away from the onslaught of young hotshots and mandatory retirement policies, Ernest hung on like the stubborn bastard he was. I've known him ever since I joined in as a green recruit those many years ago, and I sort of saw him as a father figure. A crude, foul-mouthed father figure who would sooner knock out my jaw than pat me on the shoulder for a job well done, but I wouldn't have that old relic any other way.

Because he was the product of his time, Ernest seemed to exist in his own dimension, a vacuum where common corporate sense couldn't exist without imploding on itself. Ernest's realm lived apart from the quagmire of executives that seemed to serve little purpose other than taking up space on the Tetra payroll and making every decision a bureaucratic nightmare. He says what he wants, and that was that.

Thus, unlike the rest of the cold-hearted motherfuckers the bulk of Summit's management consisted of, Ernest would actually take the time to talk to his underlings. Amazing, that!

Aimee managed to coax up an appointment with him before the main shifts started, which I could imagine annoyed the man to no end having to wake up and put on good pants. Instead of meeting him at his office (which, last I saw, still was full of brown packing boxes), I was supposed to meet him at a restaurant a few blocks away.

Normally, I wouldn't have bothered old Ernest with any random bullshit, friend or not. But what I've seen over the past days was anything but random bullshit. Giant lizards were one thing. Giant talking lizards were another. Giant talking lizard engineers, that's a third. But giant talking lizard engineers that worked in Primary Sigma? Right. Okay, this must have been an elaborate office prank.

Primary Sigma was the reigning alpha in Summit's engineering pack. And it got all the perks that came with being at the top of the food chain: the most qualified staff, the most funding, the best equipment, the most secure location, the most expensive food, you name it. Instead of parking alongside the other lowly engineering departments south of the Spire, Sigma had its own facilities deep inside the campus. It was a hardened fortification with armed guards, automatic sentry turrets and robots, laser tripwires, security cameras, and biometric gates. I've honestly seen military stockades with less security than it had. Everything was self-contained with its own power generators, water treatment plants, and even life support.

The site was the home of Tetra's "black project" developments. Need your top-secret, multi-billion-dollar government military projects done? This was the place to do it. Both Sigma's projects and budget were guarded secrets, a reality that would've made even the Pentagon blush.

I didn't know how the Isians got involved with Sigma, and I itched for the answers to that mystery. And no one else but Ernest would have the knowledge and desire to give it.

The place Ernest had chosen was a small corner diner off one of the quieter streets a few blocks away from Summit. Brown cobblestone and paper debris decorated the block along with an ambiance of pigeon flocks and trash collectors. The elevated train lines ran uninterrupted over the diner and casted a looming shadow that drowned the area in pale darkness, which helped accentuate the diner's neon sign. Vertical lettering forming "MICKS" hung along the building's corner, the "S" sputtering and refusing to wake up. The ground shook when the next train roared through the tracks above, shuttling potential patrons straight to the next espresso shop. Figures Ernest would choose a place like this.

I waited at the diner's door for a few seconds before I realized I needed to push it in. Inside, a few patrons were enjoying their morning breakfast, probably the faithful regulars, who, I imagined, were the only ones propping this place up. I found Ernest sipping on a cup of coffee on a bar stool at the counter. While most of his colleagues had graduated to three-piece suits, Ernest insisted on wearing just the essentials, like woolen, un-collared shirts and sometimes-matching pants. A few years back, he had migrated from jeans to loose-fitting slacks, saying he was "too old for canvas but not old enough for diapers." His traditional brown trench coat seemed regal when draped around his stocky body, like a cape. A red-trimmed fedora covered his normally bald head. As a formality for his bosses, he wore a yellow tie around his bare neck.

I sat down next to him in the middle of a gulp of his coffee.

"Hello, Mr. Lefko. Thanks for meeting with me."

He choked and sputtered, then forcefully swallowed the mouthful. He slammed his cup onto the counter. "What the hell?" he called out. He looked around and then saw me. He slapped the table. "Lyle, you dumb bastard. I told you a hundred times already. Never call me that!"

"Sorry, Ernest. It's an old habit."

"You damn right it's a habit. A bad habit. Today it's 'mister' this, and then before you know it, it's all 'sirs' and 'madams' and 'your highness' and all that sort of bullshit. It's a disease, I tells you. I won't hear it out from you, got it?"

I chuckled at his decree. He reached for his coffee again. A clean plate sat in front of him along with unused utensils and a fresh cloth napkin.

"So what are you going to have?" I asked.

"I'm having the smells of breakfast, that's what. My stomach can't take this kind of food anymore. Too good and too rich." He patted his belly.

"Then why did you want to meet here if you're not going to eat anything?"

He leaned in to me and said, "Because the girls here are nice, that's why." He nodded to a waitress taking orders from a pudgy-looking patron. The waitress wore a white, medium-cut shirt with a pale history of grease staining one of the shoulders and a nametag reading "Carol" attached to the right breast. I stared at bit at her shapely, hose-encased legs, which disappeared underneath a short black skirt and apron with several wide pockets. She scribbled on a paper ordering pad with mechanical familiarity and, after what seemed like an hour, dropped it in the apron's pockets when the costumer finished. Earnest politely tipped his hat to her and she came to the counter, and she returned with a red-lipsticked smile.

"I tell you, they don't have a lot of broads like this, nowadays," Ernest said as the waitress transposed the paper order onto an electronic terminal. He sighed for the nostalgic memory of a time since dead, sipped his coffee, and wiped his mouth with the napkin. "So anyway, whatcha got that's so important that you had to wake me up in the morning for?"

"How much do you know about what's going on in Primary Sigma?"

"Sigma? Now why would a kid like you want to know about a place like Sigma?"

"I have two very good reasons."

Ernest tilted his head down to his coffee. He mumbled something and shook his head, and he then finished off the cup and flagged down the waitress for more. While waiting, he started rolling up the napkin.

"I see you've met our special guests," he said.

"I've more then met them. I even have the scars on my head to prove it."

He didn't say anything, but continued fiddling with the napkin. I tapped on the counter in front of him.

"Look, I know they're working in Sigma. Someway, somehow, they're doing something in there, and I want to know what the hell's happening."

The napkin was in a tight-rolled cylinder now, which Ernest stretched across the plate like a white earthworm. The waitress brought more coffee.

"I don't manage Sigma, kid," he said. "I don't know what's going on there."

"Bullshit. I know you, Ernest. You'd make it your business to know."

Ernest sighed and drew deep sips of his coffee. He bowed his head down and folded his arms on the counter. He sighed again. Then, he started shaking his head and chuckling.

"You damn punk. You know me too well."

"You bet I do. Now, are you going to give me some answers or what?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Well, for starters, how about where the hell they came from?"

He shook his head. "That, I honestly don't know. Hell, no one in Summit does, either. Not even the Sigma boys. The things came from some sort of research institute, so they could be from fuckin' Alpha Centauri for all I know. But Tetra had to put some serious cashola on the table for these things. Had to outbid at least six other major companies. By the time I knew it, I saw a bunch of lizards walking in and out of the place."

"So they really are involved with Sigma?"

"Yep. They have all the security clearances and everything. And that's not all." He leaned in close, put his hand to his mouth, and whispered. "They're on the payroll too."

"What? What for?"

"They're employees, dummy. On the record and above-board, sponsored by Tetra Chromatics Corporation, International."

"Employees..." I muttered to myself. These damned things probably had better benefits than I did!

"Amazing, isn't it? Just when you thought Tetra was already batshit enough, they pull this stunt."

"I've seen them, Ernest. They're incredible. They cleared fifteen units of my work in an hour. I don't think anyone from Sigma or anywhere else could pull that off."

"I didn't mean that. I know the company, and they won't put any old shmuck in their precious Sigma. I'm sure these things have panache." He snapped his fingers to punctuate the word. "I'm just pissed that they finally got a young chick in the goddamn place and she's not even human."

He gave a wry smile. I couldn't help but chuckle.

"And that's pretty much it, kid," he said. "Tetra hired a couple of lizards for Sigma. That's as deep as it gets."

I stroked my forehead at the thought. I hit the bruise, but continued rubbing it, perhaps thinking the pain would jolt my ability to understand everything.

"To think," I said, "all this time, I was worried about robots and smart agents taking over my job."

"Hey, don't worry about it too much. These Isians may be smart, but they sure ain't human. And at the end of the day," he snapped his fingers and slapped my back, "that's the only thing that matters in this world."

"I guess so."

Ernest took another sip and unrolled his napkin. He spread it over his lap.

"Anyway, enough about that lizard bullshit. Sigma can hire a goddamned moose for its department head for all I care. I only give a damn about my own labs. Speaking of which, how's that neanderthal boss of yours, anyway?"

"Still kicking like his old self. Actually, I don't think he likes our guests too much. Had a little run-in with them."

"I heard." He grinned and slapped his thigh. "'Bout time someone took that idiot down a few pegs. I swear, back in my day, meatheads like him were sent to the military where they belong. I don't know how he managed to head SE-2 for so long."

"He's sure not having a good time with Tetra keeping the lizards in Secondary."

"What? They're not keeping them in SE."

"I see them hanging around there an awful lot."

He dismissed me with a wave. "Nah, that's just the lizards. They seem like it there. I guess they really like the computer you guys have."

"The Alie? That ancient thing? Why would they bother with that piece of crap when they have Sigma's equipment?"

"Don't matter to them at all. They just really like how the thing looks. It's prettier than those NTX machines. You know how animals love shiny things."

The wall clock that hung above the counter capped off another hour with a chime. Ernest examined it and drunk the rest of his coffee.

"Well, that's my cue," he said. "Sorry about the short meeting. Bum a ride with me?"

"Nah, I think I'll catch up on some breakfast."

"Suit yourself."

He pressed his cash card on counter, then buttoned up his coat and placed his hands in the pockets. He was at the door when he gave me some parting words.

"Oh, I heard some execs from Tetra are showing up at Secondary today. Don't let 'em rile you up, eh?"

I nodded. "Thanks, Ernest."

"Later, kid." He tipped his hat and left.

---

Hell would freeze over first before Ernest steered me wrong. The suits were already talking to Mark in the arena when I got the lab. I bunkered down into my station and prepared to work, but I discovered my terminal had been administratively locked, and, scanning around, so were all the others. I sat with my colleagues just playing with our thumbs.

An Isian was also in the lab, this time awake and hopping about. Unlike yesterday though, I found it to be rather amusing than uneasy. It's hard to explain the turnabout. The interactions at the courtyard yesterday helped, but you don't exactly tame lion to a kitten with just a conversation. There's this thing about them, that dichotomy of sapient intelligence and primitive animalism, which drew me in. They held a paradox within their scaly hides, and though I was never one to bother with puzzles or philosophy, let alone philosophical puzzles, this one compelled me to explore its secrets.

The longer I observed the Isians, the more difficult it became for me to retain that anger I once had toward them.

Past Mark and the executives, the glow of the holographic platform caught my attention, jarring considering we rarely used it. Running the terminals taxed the Alie-Grommot enough to starve the platform of the resources it needed. Though now, since all the terminals were locked, the mainframe could dedicate enough processing time to drive it.

Information flooded the holograph as an opening dam. I could barely keep up with the deluge, everything from statistical data, to simulation results, to graphics, and to, most noticeably, sets of two- and three-dimensional schematics. The prints displayed in a mess of confusing lines, numbers, and symbols all squashed right on top of the other, like cars crushed into scrap cubes.

The Isian was ticking away at the platform's control panel near its base. It would occasionally stop the holograph, observe the visual morass for a second, and continue.

Finished with the suits, Mark was now addressing the entire lab, but I didn't listen. My attention transfixed itself on the Isian at the panel. It stood on its hind legs as it manipulated the controls with its thin foreclaws, like a symphony's conductor, directing the figures, stats, and images to the rhythm of its floor-thumping tail. One-by-one, the schematics were spread, disassembled, zoomed, rotated, moved, merged, and tilted. I couldn't keep up with the surge of the composition. Eventually, the flow bogged down enough to mortal speeds for me to take a proper examination of the schematics.

I very nearly choked when I read one of their titles: 22-09-64 N-82A K-BLADE PROTOTYPE, SIGMA-1 S5.

A Sigma black project!

God Almighty. None of us here had the security clearance to know even existence of this project, let alone its title. Yet here it was, that plus its associated design schematics, preening proudly for everyone in the lab. The Isian was tacking through the contents of a Sigma government project right here in Secondary without a damn in the world. The most amazing part? None of the suits in the room bothered to stop it.

A nudge on my leg pulled me out from my bewilderment. A white, reptilian snout looked back at me.

"Hey, Ly-lee!" it called out. It was the male.

"Oh hey," I whispered.

"Did you bring the food for us today?" he asked excitedly, unaware or uncaring of my effort to remain quiet.

"Yeah, yeah I did." I turned to see if Mark had noticed us. He stopped talking and looked directly at me.

"Oh goody!"

Mark shook his head and continued his speech.

The Isian clicked his tongue and asked, "What kind of food did you pack for us?"

"Two ham sandwiches and two apples for each of you," I said. He moaned an "mmmm" and licked his lips at the menu. "I also put in some of the French toast I had this morning too."

"French? Is that like France? Isn't that a place or something? How do you make toast out of a place?"

"It's not made out of France, but by people from there."

"Oooooooh."

He whistled and clicked his tongue.

I took a look back at the platform. The Sigma project was still in plain view. I decided to bring it up to the Isian, thinking he would be able to talk sense to his partner before any they could get into trouble.

"Hey, I think your friend is doing something that she isn't supposed to."

"Hmmm?"

I pointed to the platform. "Is she supposed to be looking at that," I pointed down, "here?"

With a quizzical expression, he lifted himself on two legs and tiptoed over the partition to the arena, and he shrieked when he looked down. I thought it was an emote of anger or surprise, but no.

"Oh, they finally did it!" he cried while hopping up and down and clapping his claws.

"What?"

"They finally moved our data here! We don't have to work in that awful Sigma place anymore!"

He whistled and then ran down to the arena to meet his female compatriot.

The terminals were unlocked about half an hour later, finally allowing us to get to work. The tech heads routed in cycles from a spare mainframe in SE-1, a dingy machine even more cantankerous than the Alie. The terminals ran like a sloth dipped in molasses, but as the Isians had commandeered our mainframe, we had little other choice than to suffer through it.

For their part though, the lizards used the Alie to full effect. They would take turns operating, one controlling the platform while the other lay on the sidelines (the floor, the mainframe, or on the platform itself) to watch and offer incomprehensible tips. Animals would be animals however, and they occasionally devolved back to running and playing after an hour straight on the job, but only enough to burn off some energy, and it was back to work after two or three minutes.

In between their stretches of work, I could make out what exactly the Isians were developing. It looked like an aircraft, but it couldn't tell exactly what kind. I couldn't grab much more information in the couple minutes before the lizards went back to work.

The suits observed the lab for a few hours and then left. Mark came up to me.

"Now you're too fucking important to listen to me, Ivano?"

"What, you were talking? I must have confused it with hot air from your ass, my mistake." I twisted to ease in the mock-punch he gave my shoulder. "I was just preoccupied."

"That stupid animal? What'd it want, this time?"

"Some barking crazy lizard bullshit. Don't worry about it."

"Ha, fine by me."

Mark filled me in with the abridged version of his announcement. Apparently, the suits moved the Isians to Secondary Engineering as their semi-permanent base of operations (no doubt due to the lizards' insistence). That meant while the rest of us in SE were toiling away at our usual leftover grunge work, they'd be working here on their Primary Sigma projects. To accommodate this boneheaded and unorthodox arrangement, all of us in Secondary had been given conditional security clearances that had more strings attached to them than a marionette. Suffice to say that if I even thought of telling anyone outside about the clearance, let alone the Sigma project itself, I would feel no small amount of civil and legal pain. Hell, Tetra probably could have ordered its lobbyists to convince the government to try me for treason.

To accommodate the Isians, Tetra was bending over a table to a degree beyond the measurement of man. The company must have believed the lizards were worth all this bullshit. I can't say I disagreed.

Lunchtime rolled in, and the Isians didn't waste any time in seizing their entitlements from me. I had barely taken the lunch sacks out from my bag when they snatched them out of my hands and ran out the doors on all fours, their lunches carried in their mouths. I followed them to the cafeteria.

I rarely ate at the employee cafeteria. The Isians were actually right; the food was pretty terrible, the products of an unholy mating between airline and hospital food, garnished with junk from the corner liquor store. Summit did offer quality dining on the premises, but they were meant for the management types. Given their ability to fuck the company's ass, surely the Isians would be able to patronize these restaurants, but they chose not to for whatever reason.

The lizards were lying on the cafeteria's tile floor in the process of ravaging their lunches. Entire tables adjacent to them remained empty despite the cafeteria crowding to near capacity. I took a seat on a table next to them.

The floor around them became a refuge for crumbs, skin, bits of meat, and saliva as their meal progressed, proof that you could have all the mental brilliance in the world, but it will never teach you good table manners. Or floor manners.

"You know," I said to them, "you guys should really eat on a table."

"Hmmph?" one of them groaned with a mouthful of food.

"Tables." I tapped on the tabletop. "You guys should eat here."

The lizard swallowed his mouthful with an audible gulp and asked why.

"Because, it's cleaner, it's better, and that's what we do."

"But it's too weird," he said.

"Too weird and too awkward," said his companion.

"But don't you see?" I said. "When you guys do something like this, everyone thinks you're just a bunch of stupid animals, when you're obviously not."

"Really?" said the male. He perked up. "That's great! I like animals!"

"Do you like animals?" asked the female.

"Well, I do, but--"

"Yay! Then I like being an animal!"

The male bobbed his head in agreement. They then proceeded to lick the large scraps off the floor. Oh well, at least I tried.

An alien sound pierced through the bustle and noise of the cafeteria. It stood out because you seldom heard its kind in Summit, at least in the engineering wing. Heels. I pivoted in my seat and saw a woman approaching us.

"Ar-lene!" the lizards called when they saw her. They leapt at the poor woman and lapped at her face and neck.

"Good to see you guys too," she said, trying to fend off their affections with an amused smile. She finally patted them off her body. The Isians sat down with canine obedience in front of her, complete with wagging tails that slapped on the table legs. She took notice of their food on the floor.

"I thought you guys didn't like to eat here."

"Ly-lee brought us food," the male said.

"It was good!" said his partner.

"He even brought toast made from French people or something."

Arlene frowned. "Ly-lee? Who's that?" The Isians pointed to me, and she seemed surprised at the sight.

"Arlene, can we go get some more food?" one of them asked. Arlene nodded, and they scampered off.

She stepped over the mess on the floor and came to my table. She sat on the opposite side from me with a sort of rumpled, undecided smile. Her hand waved to me. "Lyle, right?"

"That's me," I replied. "Or Ly-lee, if you want."

Her smiled broadened and became genuine. "I see you've already made friends with our Isians."

"Yeah. I think we've come to quite a rapport, actually. You give them food, and they won't try to eat you. Works out great."

"You must have learned that from that oh-so-wonderful boss of yours."

"I learned everything from him. Man, I must have fed him an entire cow before he stopped gnawing on me."

We shared a laugh.

There were a few moments of silence after we ran out of things to say. We stared past each other like an awkward morning-after. Arlene twirled her hair on her finger while I tried to keep busy by wiping my clean mouth with the collar of my shirt. Eventually, she spoke first.

"About the last time, when we talked in the lab."

"Oh, don't worry about that."

"No, no, really. I'm sorry for losing it. I didn't mean what I said about you and your colleagues."

"Hey, it's no problem. I wasn't exactly innocent with my comments either."

"I guess we both just got stressed with things the past few days, eh?"

"Yes, two things," I said, bringing up two fingers and then pointing them to the Isians.

They stood atop the counter at the lunch line and curved over the plastic median to nose directly into the food, much to the dismay of the bewildered attendant behind them. He stood there clutching on a dirty spatula as if wanting to shoo off the creatures, but he was too visibly frightened to do so. The line of patrons, meanwhile, created a wide detour around them.

One of them liberated a half-empty meatloaf tray and proceeded to gnaw on the remains. The other was more fickle, sniffing through each offering and grimacing when they failed to satisfy its appetite. It finally settled on globs of "peach cobbler" (which I was sure was neither peach nor cobbler) scooped in its claws.

Arlene sighed. "Oh, there they go again. They keep saying how they don't like the food here, yet they always want more of it."

"Well, at least one of them has actual taste."

"Oh? Which one?"

"That one, with the cobbler. He... I mean, she... erm..." I squinted at the lizard to determine the correct pronoun. Arlene looked nonplussed.

"Name?" she asked.

"You know what? All this time, I don't know. They've given me a name and everything already, and it never occurred to me to ask for theirs."

"Ah!" She tapped the table and pointed to me, then the lizards. "Well, it's never too late to make an introduction, don't you think?"

She pointed to the meatloaf-feeder, who had finished the loaf and was polishing the tray of greasy residue with its tongue. "That's our handsome drake. His name is Basil."

I tongued the name in my mouth a few times. Basil, really? A strong, mighty creature like that was named Basil? Ha, wow. I had to stifle in a laugh.

"Basil huh? Isn't that a pretty wimpy name for a predator?"

"It's actually short for Basilisk, the legendary monster that left a trail of poison wherever it went and could kill with its poisonous stare."

"Oh."

Arlene pointed to other Isian, the female, curled up and napping on the counter with bits of peach glaze glistening on her claw-tips. "And that lovely lady over there is his twin sister, Tiamat."

"I know that's got to mean something, but I'll be damned if I know it."

"Tiamat is from ancient Babylonian mythology. She was the great primeval chaos personified as a huge sea serpent, who created all manner of terrible creatures in order to destroy her children," she explained as I looked at her in disbelief. "We mostly just call her Tia, for short."

"Poisonous monsters? Primeval chaos? Who the heck gave them these names?"

She shrugged. "They got them before I even worked at Wyvern. Apparently, there was some sort of theme naming going on back then."

Both of the terrible, mythic creatures were now snoring, to the relief of the cafeteria patrons.

"I don't know how much knowing their names will help me, anyway," I said. "How can you even tell twins apart?"

"They're fraternal twins, not identical. They're of different sexes, for one thing. They may look the same, but there are ways of telling them apart."

"Such as?"

"Well, for starters, you can check the flare of their tails. The flanges on the male are wider while the female's are sharper. Also, their frills are a little bit different. Female frills tend to have thinner spines. You can also tell by their talons. On average, female claws are three millimeters longer than the male's. When in doubt, you could always examine the anterior of the body, right underneath the tail. The male genitalia is--"

I called out and waved for her to stop. "Woah, woah, woah! That's enough of that! I think I have enough information now, thank you."

Arlene smirked at my discomfort. "Don't like biology, Lyle?"

"Not that sort."

"But that's the best kind!"

That got another laugh from both of us.

"Well then," she said, "anything else you'd like to know about?"

"Yeah, how about everything else?"

"'Everything' is a pretty big topic. Something smaller perhaps?"

"Okay, then how about where they came from? And don't give me that 'if I told you, I'd have to kill you' bullshit, either, unless my death involves something awesome like rockets and big explosions and strippers. Lots of 'em."

"I'm pretty sure we won't have to resort to that just quite yet."

"Damn. I was looking forward to the strippers."

She chuckled. "Well to be honest, I'm not exactly sure where they came from either. The government gave them to Wyvern, but it was under classified circumstances."

"So the government just handed them to you out of the blue?"

"More or less."

Right then, I vowed that, in my lifetime, I would become a redneck.

"So the Isians could be mutant aliens for all you know, right?"

"Oh, don't be silly. There are only a handful of places they could have come from, and we know them all. But our liaison won't tell us which exact one ours came from."

"And what places are these?"

"Well, there's the G--" She cut herself off and shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. That's not for me to say."

"Why not?"

"Government secrets. I know only enough to do my job, Lyle. And unfortunately, that means you can only know even less."

I shook my head. "I don't like it. They're hiding something about the Isians, and I don't like it."

"You don't have to like it. This is just how things are, and we all have to deal with it. Frankly, all that I think about are these twins, right there." She pointed to the Isians. "The government and its secrets can go to hell for all I care."

She had a look of resentment on her face.

"Fair enough," I said. "Then, can you tell me why you sold them to my stupid company?"

"I don't know, why did your parents sell you to Tetra?"

"What? They did no such thing."

"Then neither did we." She rolled her eyes. "Pets are sold, Lyle. So are robots. And so are slaves. But in the civilized world, we don't sell intelligent, feeling beings, and we haven't for centuries. That's barbarism. Tetra didn't buy the Isians, they hired them just like you and everyone else."

"You say 'hired,' I say 'bought.' You say 'po-tay-toh,' I say 'po-tah-toh.' You assume Tetra makes a distinction."

Arlene leered at me. "You sure love your company, don't you?"

"Sure do. And I'd love you too if you'd answered my question."

"What's there to answer? I know you've seen them in the labs. Do you really need me to tell you all the reasons why?"

"Maybe not." I slumped into my seat and thought of the ferocity of the work they've done in the labs. It still seemed surreal. "I guess I haven't yet come to terms with it all yet."

"Believe me, it took me a while too. Even now, I sometimes forget they aren't children anymore and that they're able to choose their own future." She sighed. "Even if I don't necessarily agree with it."

"Hey now, there are far worst places to work than Tetra, especially if you're in Sigma."

"It's nothing against the company. I just rather they stay home and not work anywhere at all." She chuckled and shook her head. "Maybe I just have a hard time letting go."

"I don't blame you, considering how they are."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I mean, well... just look at them." I pointed to their sleeping forms on the lunch counter. "Would you think these guys are intelligent? They look like dumb animals."

"Looks aren't everything, Lyle."

"Okay then, they don't look like animals, they act like them. Have you met anyone that runs and plays around naked while they work on their top-secret engineering projects? I sure as hell haven't. Things that aren't animals usually don't sleep on a countertop at an employee cafeteria, either. And look at this," I waved to the pile of crumbs and remains the Isians left earlier, "they eat like mutts. Hell, even my dog used a bowl. How do you square that away? How can something this smart be so... so dumb?"

I slumped in my seat. My mouth yapped faster than I could think, and I didn't consider how Arlene might take it until after I finished. And considering my previous encounter with her, I suddenly regretted my choice of words. I began to prepare an apology when she spoke.

"Yeah, you're right."

Huh. Surprise?

She said, "I've never actually seen Isian society in the wild, not first-hand at least. But many of my colleagues have, and apparently, Isians aren't that much different there. Individuals are intelligent, very much so, and they have great potential aptitude. But that's just all it is, potential. They never seem to use it and never apply it. They live like pack animals."

"So how did you guys get engineers from pack animals?"

"Start them young. We got the twins when they were just babies, way before I even came to Wyvern. It goes a long way. They're only fifteen-years-old, did you know that? That's adulthood in Isian years, but I challenge you to finish the education they went through in the same amount of time."

"I didn't need to go to school to learn that you eat at a table and sleep in a bed."

"Training only gets you so far, Lyle. Really, at the end of the day, their work here in Summit is more or less a game to them. That urge to live how they do, well... it's instinct."

"It doesn't make any sense," I said. "The two of them finished work in one hour that would take me an entire day to do. It's crazy. You'd think they'd be able to create the most advanced civilization in the world. What the hell went wrong with them?"

Arlene sighed in a way that suggested she knew that answer but was hesitant to say it. "They have the smarts to do it, but I don't think they really care to. Sometimes, I think, the simplest life is the one that makes you the happiest."

I opened my mouth to refute the statement, but it turned out I couldn't think of anything to say. The lunch hour ticked out with a chime from the PA system and saved me from another incident of awkwardness.

"Shoot," I said. "I'm going to be late for my shift. Again."

I looked around, and the cafeteria, besides a few stragglers, was empty. Isians too. I got up and pulled my unopened lunch from the table. Maybe I'll save it for the twins for tomorrow, I thought.

"Better get going then," Arlene said.

"See you sometime later?"

"Will the Isians still be here?"

"Probably."

She smiled and said, "Then I'll be around."

Chapter 3.2

After a few days, the shock and novelty of working with a pair of huge lizards eventually subsided, and the labs went back to its standard operating routines, slightly dazed but otherwise normal. You'd expect an awful implosion when you had a volatile mix of humans and educated pack animals, maybe a bite here, a scratch there, or a decapitated head everywhere, but it never happened. Turns out I was the sole winner in Isian-inflicted injuries. Lucky me!

I've never actually seen them leave the premises. They breathed, ate, and lived right inside of Summit with a range that extended no further than the southern engineering labs to the maple in the courtyard. This sometimes led to conflicts. In the grand scheme of evolution, Isian progenitors must have interbred with felines at one point, because they were prolific nappers. And like scaly cats, they confiscated any territory available for their own narcoleptic pleasures. Supercomputers, lunch counters, bathroom stalls (both male and female), workstations, prototype engines, multiple varieties of desks, maintenance closets, elevators, elevator shafts, and damned everything else. Once, one of them caused an incident when he or she decided that a ventilation shaft was a cozy place to snuggle up in. The spectacle of the maintenance crews investigating the blockage and surprising a grumpy and groggy lizard was something precious. You just had to hope neither of them thought your terminal was a comfortable bed when you came to work, because good luck trying to get them off.

Meanwhile, I've kept a civil relationship with the Isians, the cornerstone of which involved small lunches. Like clockwork, they would beg for me in the morning to bring them food the next day at the exact same time. What could I do, really? Refuse? I didn't have the nerve for that. Surely at this point, the lizards wouldn't actually attack me, but inciting their ire wasn't something I wished to press either. Fair enough, they were entertained with the simplest of entrees. The most expensive meal I ever brought were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I made it from stale raspberry jelly and years-old peanut butter that I was about to throw away. The Isians thought it was the best thing ever.

The twins continued work on their Sigma project in SE-2. Tetra brought in a top-of-the-line NTX supercomputer into the lab for their use. The NTX apparently wasn't colorful enough though, and they refused to acknowledge its existence in favor of the Alie. No problem, the rest of us were glad to make use of it if they didn't. Not content to leave well enough alone however, one of the compulsive tweakers in the lab juiced it out of spec until our terminals ran like lightning dipped in nitroglycerin.

Most of us didn't pay attention to the Isians' work, not from lack of interest but paranoia. Because the less we knew about the project, the less trouble we would get into if something went awry. I did sneak a peek here and there, though. As the project progressed, I could see that it was, indeed, an aircraft. It had long, swept wings and a curving, streamlined body like a fish. But it had a certain pernicious aura about it, something vindictive and menacing. This was less a trout and more great white. No, it wasn't a bloated jetliner that spent its days cramming irate passengers inside its fuselage. This thing ate jetliners.

Frankly, it made me nervous.

I wasn't surprised in the least that Sigma had them build a military aircraft. It was just something else that disturbed me. The twins seemed just so cheerfully ignorant that they were creating a warplane. I questioned whether or not they understood what it really was. It's one thing to know what guns do, but it's an entire new realm of comprehension to understand what war is. Humanity is well versed with the concept, but I didn't know about Isians. I doubted that they truly grasped what they were designing, and it didn't seem fair them.

There was only one Isian in the lab this morning. When the twins chose different resting spots, it would often take a bit of time for both to converge at the lab. But it had been an hour already with no signs of the missing lizard. The present Isian was taking its usual morning stretch while the Alie warmed up. I wasn't sure which one it was. Despite Arlene's explanation on how to delineate between the two, I still couldn't tell them apart for the life of me. Tails, claws, spines, or whatever, they all looked the same. And to be sure, I wasn't about to lift their tails for a peek

The lizard started coming up the stairs with its talons scraping the floor in tinny taps. It came up to my station and stared at me with its eyes opened in wide, blue orbs. It tucked its lips up into a smile. I tried to wait for it to speak so that I could tell whether it was the brother or the sister, but it just continued to give me a toothy grin. The game required me to guess.

"Hello..." I started. It bobbed its head to cajole more words from me. I tried to examine it and come up with justifications for selecting a particular sex. Forehead? Body shape? Perfume? Gah, impossible. I went with alphabetical order. "Basil?"

It clapped its claws together and whistled. "Nope!" it said with a little hop.

"Ah Tia! What's up?"

"Electrical lines, data links, and dust mostly. They should really replace the rafters. They don't hold my weight that good."

I smiled and nodded. I didn't know, and I didn't want to know.

I starting going back to work, but Tia snuggled underneath the table and propped her slender head in my lap and between my hands, preventing me from using the terminal.

"Whatcha doin'?" she said.

"You know what I'm doing. I'm working. And you should too."

She scoffed. "No, my brother isn't here yet."

"Where is he, anyway? I haven't seen him all day."

"In the industrial district."

"What?" The city's industrial district was several kilometers away. "What's he doing there?"

She folded her arms on my lap and rested her head on them. "He slept in a maintenance vehicle last night. It took off with him still inside, I guess. They're bringing him back now."

Well, at least one of them finally got a chance to get out from Summit, I thought. Tia closed her eyes and snuggled herself on my lap. Even just a few days back, I would have been the most terrified son of a bitch in the world. But this was fine now. Nice even. I kept working with my right hand and used my left to scratch behind her ears, which she expressed appreciation for by purring like a big pussycat. A big, hairless pussy-cat. With mountains of razor-sharp teeth.

After a few minutes, the Isian slipped off my lap, moved beside me, and propped her head on my shoulder to watch with reptilian tranquility. I felt a bit self-conscious of the attention, much like how you'd feel when your teacher looked over your shoulder when you struggled with an algebra test, but I kept working. Eventually, I noticed she wasn't even looking at the screen but to my hands, strangely. Her head began bobbing to the rhythm of my typing, as if she couldn't keep her eyes off of them. Yeah, they were a bit dry and chaffed, but I didn't think it was that big a deal.

"You have nice hands," she said rather absentmindedly

"Thanks." It was a strange compliment.

She bent to the side and moved her muzzle close to my hands until the warm breath from her nostrils tickled my skin. She yelped when she discovered something.

"Oh! You have thumbs too!"

My thumbs?

Before I could press another key, she grasped my right hand and pulled it around, the action of which forced my body to swivel on the chair until I rotated in front of her. I sat dumbfounded while she examined my hand as if it was some sort of artifact. Her long tail swished around with excitement and struck the other desks, much to the irritation of my coworkers.

"Oh, your thumbs are beautiful," she swooned across my hand.

Beautiful thumbs. She thought I had beautiful thumbs. You could compliment a man with many things that would fill him with pride. Telling him that he had "beautiful thumbs" was not one of them. And you would think that being around hundreds of humans in Summit would let her discover the wonders of human thumbs, but no, she seemed genuinely surprised at mine.

She took my hand and molded it flat upwards. Then, she pressed her left claw onto it. "See?" she said. "I have a thumb too!"

And she did, a long, bony thumb extending from her thin wrist. I took the opportunity to explore her hand as she did mine. Besides the thumb, she had only two fingers. Although her palm was slightly smaller than my own, her digits were quite a bit longer and sleeker. Sharp nails, hiding against the white of the skin, tipped each finger. They pressed gently into my flesh.

I had expected a frosty, cold-blooded touch, but her hand surprised me with its warmth. The smooth scales of her palm rubbed its heat against my hand like a warm bottle of milk, a feeling that wasn't unpleasant at all. Actually, it was... soothing.

Finally, after a few minutes, she took her hand away. I didn't want to admit it then, but deep inside, I wanted to feel her hand just a few moments longer.

"Aren't opposable thumbs great, Ly-lee? They're oh-so-useful."

"Yeah, they are," I said. I went back to my work.

She lay on the floor next to my chair. "So Ly-lee, how did you get your name?" she asked, not minding the abrupt subject change.

"You gave it to me, remember?"

She shook her head. "No, no, no, no. I meant your other name."

"My last name? Ivano?"

"Yes, yes! That one."

"It's my family's name. Everybody in my family has it."

"Then, how did your family get it?"

"It's a boring story, actually. You probably won't like it."

Under the insistent shaking of her head, I relented.

"Well, our family's name actually used to be Ivanovitch. My great-great-grandparents were Russian immigrants. They came to this country to start a new and better life, and everything else. Anyway, they didn't want to be too ethnic, so they changed their names when they had children. My grandparents weren't exactly the creative type, and just chopped off the end and formed the name Ivanov. Later on down the line, someone got lazy on a birth certificate and missed a 'v' and we got Ivano. I guess, eventually, someone would get even lazier and we'll just have 'Ivan' as last names. Lyle Crazy Ivan, right?"

The lizard seemed to have lost interest halfway through my story. "I told you it was boring," I said.

"Oh, not boring," she said. "Just... not very interesting."

She leapt on the desk and craned her head between my face and the screen. "Do you know how I got my name, Ly-lee?"

"Someone in Wyvern gave it to you?"

"Yes, but do you know what it means?"

"I think Arlene told me it was an ancient sea serpent or something like that."

"Close but not quite, Ly-lee. Tiamat means 'bitter water,' and she was a great dragon of the oceans and queen of the universe." She whistled and pranced in pride of the origin of her namesake. "Would you like me to tell you the story of Tiamat?"

She clicked with delight when I agreed. I listened to her story while I worked.

"In the beginning, there was no earth, no sky, and no animals or people or lizards. There was just Apsu, the river, and Tiamat, the sea. Because there was nothing, they could sleep. Together, they mingled their waters and created their children."

She clasped her hands together and intertwined her fingers to illustrate the bonding of the deities.

"Then their children had children, and then they had children, and so on, and it became terribly noisy. Tiamat couldn't sleep anymore, so Apsu wanted to stop the noise. His servant Mummu came up with an evil plan to kill all their children, so they could sleep again, and Apsu agreed.

"Because Tiamat was his mate, and the mother of their children, Apsu went to ask for her approval. When Tiamat heard the plan, she got furious. When she calmed down, she said, 'These are my children, and I will not help you destroy them,'" She recited the dialogue in a dramatic voice. "Unfortunately, Mummu convinced Apsu to go with the plan without her help.

"But one of their children, Ea knows all and sees all. When he found out about the plan, he decided to stop them. While Apsu and Mummu were distracted, Ea put a sleep spell on them, and then he bound them with magic. And then..."

She trailed off and stopped.

I thought she was just merely recollecting her thoughts, but then she remained silent for several minutes. I looked away from the screen and found her on her back fixated on the ceiling, her tail rolling on the floor.

"Well?" I called to her.

She snapped back looked at me with surprise. "Well, what?"

"The story. What happened next?"

"Story?"

She had completely forgotten about it.

"Yes, you were telling about the story about Tiamat," I said. I really did want to know what happened next.

"Oh. Well, some things happen and she dies."

"That's it? You gave me all that stuff just to say she dies?"

She shrugged and hummed.

"I feel bit cheated by the end of your story."

"Well, you can ask my brother about his name, Ly-lee. His is much better anyway." She stood up on the table, stretched her back and legs, and jumped off down to the arena to poke around the platform.

When Basil finally arrived, I asked him about his name. He simply answered that he was named after "some sort of stupid poisonous lizard thing or something" before joining his sister on the mainframe.

Chapter 3.3

"Customer service requested in the produce section. Any available attendant, please assist," the awkwardly synthesized computer voice screeched through the supermarket's audio systems. It would probably be half a day later before a service bot showed up, assuming the place had any on call. I pressed the service button again just to make sure.

Ah, the wonders of your local corner market and its antiquated charms. Prices were catalogued and changed by hand with bulky scanners that still read ancient radio frequency tags on the products, which was no doubt the source of my problem. The store had its honeydew and cantaloupe mixed together in a large bin with three prices displayed on a plastic sign: $2.50, $3.00 and $7.93, each unlabeled. They were also priced per pound, a unit of measurement familiar only by the obsessive and insane.

A human attendant finally arrived, a prickly-faced teenager equipped with the face of utter boredom.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"Yeah, I want to buy some of these melons, but I don't know their prices."

"The prices are on the tags, sir."

"Yes I know, but there are three of them and only two products."

He gave a deep, annoyed sigh. "Only two of them are for the melons, sir."

"I know that," I said, becoming slightly irritated. "But I don't know which ones."

"These ones, sir." He pointed to the sign above the melons.

"I know that!"

The clerk stared at me with blank, stupid eyes. Gritting my teeth together, I forced a smile and said, "Thanks for the help. I appreciate it."

The kid rolled his eyes and walked away. I took one of each melon and checked out.

Honestly, I didn't have a terrible liking for these fruits, but they weren't for me. Instead of the usual sack lunches, I thought I'd bring something new for the twins as a treat. Despite being natural carnivores (or so I've been told), they had a curious love for fruit. And I discovered that, for them, there were none greater than the cantaloupe and the honeydew. Not strawberries or mangoes or peaches or any other tooth-destroying delicacy. Just cantaloupes and honeydews. Well, one or the other, anyway. Tia adored honeydew while Basil preferred cantaloupe. They weren't interchangeable, either. The twins wouldn't touch the other's melon-of-choice, and prolonged arguments about the superiority of either fruit often resulted.

Blistering air sharpened by Summit's air conditioning froze off the traces of sweat on my body when I took refuge from the summer heat. More than a place to escape the roasting sun, though, the building's igloo could refrigerate the Isians' fruit until I could give it to them.

"Greetings, Mr. Ivano," Aimee greeted when I came to her desk. "Wonderful day, is it not?"

"Absolutely wonderful," I said. Since the company didn't bother buying a sarcasm module for her, she took my words and smiled. I brought up the sweaty melons for her. She examined them with curious respect.

"Oh, Mr. Ivano. That is kind of you, but I am afraid that I am not quite fond of fruits."

"Gifts for the Isians."

She took the melons and carefully balanced them on the tips of her fingers, so as not to bruise them against her metal hands, and transferred them to a large wicker basket on her desk. It held all sorts of other delectables: bananas, apples, cans of tuna and assorted meats, cereal, beef jerky, protein insta-meals, and a pomegranate. These were all offerings from other employees. Mine were far superior.

"I feel sorry for those other guys and their crappy fruits," I said to Aimee as she snuggled my melons with the other food in the basket. "They just can't compete. It's so unfair, it's downright criminal."

She turned back to me. "How long do you think you can continue with this cantaloupe and honeydew secret?"

"As long as no one else knows."

"Someone is bound to figure it out."

"Nah. No one is going to go home, lay on the bed, and think, 'Hey, you know what? I should bring honeydew and cantaloupe. They're gonna love that stuff.' No way."

"The Isians are fickle, Mr. Ivano, and there are thousands of other fruits in the world. Someone is bound to find something that would catch their fancy. Such as me?"

I laughed at her. She brought food for the lizards? How can a machine possibly know what tastes good? Last time I checked, they didn't have taste buds. Or taste sensors. Whatever.

Aimee smiled and pointed down, below her desk, and I leaned over to see. Underneath was an enormous, oblong, and green object with a bow tied around its circumference.

"You brought a watermelon?" I said, and then laughed some more. "Sorry, Aimee, but no way. They're not going to like that over mine. It's a watermelon. Everybody's eaten watermelons. If they don't like them by now, they're not going to like yours."

She smirked at me with beady eyes, the look of someone armed with unfair enlightenment. "That is where you are incorrect, Mr. Ivano. They have not."

"Bullshit."

"Yes. They always had a belief that they are, literally, water inside of a melon. A bulbous ovary of fluid, if you will. Hence they never wanted to try it."

"That still doesn't mean they would like it."

"Oh I believe that they will," she said. She pulled the enormous melon out, hugged it close on her lap, and rubbed it as a pregnant woman stroking her belly. The goddamn thing was larger than the Isians themselves. "This specimen was grown in the bioengineering department and was specifically engineered to have many times the fructose of your typical watermelon, plus a meatier, more substantial flesh. I believe the Isians will thoroughly enjoy it."

Oh, damn that devil robot woman.

She left the debate with a smirk and sat gargantuan watermelon back underneath the desk. I asked her where the twins were, and she replied that Ms. Tiamat was still asleep in the maple tree and Mr. Basilisk was taking a bath. I thanked her and went to visit Basil.

The Isians was floating on his back in his bath, his proud, blue chin upturned so his nostrils poked above the water's surface. His tail swept through the water in lazy swathes that propelled him body across the pool without purpose, but he somehow managed to avoid the jets of water from disturbing his swim. I sat down on the rim and watched. He had a few other admirers that did the same, and a couple of them tossed a few useless coins into the water.

Figures that an Isian would use the lobby's water fountain as a bathtub.

When he swam near me, I whistled for his attention. Startled, he shrieked and bounced off the surface until his feet found the bottom of the pool. He shook his head of excess water and panned around until he found me. "Ly-lee!" he said after spraying out errant bits of water from his nostrils. He gripped the rim and climbed out of the fountain.

"How's the water?" I asked.

"Cold and viscous."

He stood on the fountain's ledge and, not unlike a dog, shook himself dry. He then came and sat next to me, bits of water still dripping from the tip of his nose, and started scratching behind his ears with a talon on his hind leg.

"Hey Ly-lee, can I ask you for some advice?" he asked.

"Sure. About what?"

"Our project. We can't agree to what kind of propulsion system to use. Tia wants to use an Applied Dynamics K-series engine, either the 600 or 600AT. But I want to use a Sarmine P-70. Which do you think is better?"

"Really Basil, I'm not the best person to ask about this. Aerospace engine systems aren't my expertise. I'm just a dumb engineer from Secondary."

He chirped and shook his head. "Oh, you're not dumb, Ly-lee! You're one of the smartest people I know!"

"Well, thanks for the compliment." I expressed my appreciation by scratching his neck, which he returned by purring. "Anyway, is the system you want that much better?"

"Oh sure! I mean, the K engines have a lot of power, but get pretty unstable if you push them too hard. And it's worst with the AT version and its dumb vectoring system. The P-70 system better. It's smaller, easier, and takes a third less energy than Tia's system. If you put hers in, we might run into power problems."

"There you go then. That issue means you can't use it, right?"

"Well, Tia's idea is to increase the size of the power plant." He billowed his arms apart. "Use a big, double-size reactor."

"Is that even possible?"

"Eh, yeah." He shrugged. "But it'll look kinda ugly."

"Well buddy, I don't know what else to say. You're just going to have to convince her that you have the better idea."

He shook his head in a wide arc and let out a contemptuous snort. "No, no, that's not going to work. Tia won't listen to me. She's too stubborn. That's why I came to ask you, because she'll listen to you. You bring her food, I don't."

"This is just part of the design process, guy. Someone thinks one way is the best, someone else wants to do it another way, and then a third person thinks they're both wrong. There's going to be disagreements in any project, so you either convince them you're right or compromise. You're just going to have to convince her somehow, unless you want to let her win and fit an inferior system into your project. Do you really want that?"

He sat and brooded with frowned for a moment, then crossed his arms and shook his head. "I guess not. But it's going to be a pain."

"It's one or the other, Basil. You can't exactly compromise by smashing both engines together. So you're going to persuade her you have the best choice. Otherwise, you best get comfortable with the K600. Unless you guys want to design and build an entire engine yourselves, you're gonna have to do it."

Basil tapped his toenails on the ledge a few taps, and then his eyes lit up with understanding. "You're right, Ly-lee!" he exclaimed. "I think I got it now! I know how to convince her."

"That's great, little buddy. Go out and make it happen."

"But in the meantime, can you still try to convince Tia that the Sarmine P-70 is better than the dumb AD K600? She'll listen to you."

"I'll try, but I can't promise anything."

He thanked me with affectionate licks on my face. I laughed during my attempts to avoid the sloppy wet kisses.

"Hey, hey, down you silly lizard. I have a surprise for you. Stop and I'll tell you about it."

"Hmm?"

"It's a surprise treat. I think you'll like it."

"Oh!" he yelped, his tail straightening in attention. "Basil loves treats!" He skipped along the edge of the pool, his energized tail thumping wildly on the rim and water, and repeated, "Treats, treats!" I had to grab his flailing tail and rein him in.

"Calm down. Lunch time's not for several hours yet. Now get to the lab and work hard, and I promise I'll give it to you, all right?"

He bobbed his head in affirmation, jumped off the fountain's rim, and trotted off to the engineering wing. I followed him along the line of hungry saliva he left in his wake on the floor.

The Alie-Grommot blazed ("blazed" in a relative sense) through mountains of data in record time with the twins at the helm. They didn't take time off for their scheduled 10:30 hide-and-seek, and even ignored the jerky an employee had placed on the platform. Model employees, really. If only management knew about the wondrous motivational qualities of cantaloupe and honeydew.

At twelve, on the atomic dot, the Isians dropped their work and flew madly to my station. I could make out a few coherent sentences between the shrieks of excitement.

"The treats you promised!"

"Yes! Treats! Promised!"

"We worked hard!"

"We really did!"

"Hard and working!"

"Working and hard!"

"Can you give it to us now?"

"Please?"

"Pretty please pretty?"

By the grace of God, I managed to keep myself from being trampled by excited lizards, and I eventually pried them off of me. They sat down on the floor in front of me, their child-like eyes glistening in anticipation, and I told them to head out first and I'd meet them in a few minutes with their surprises. They bolted off to claim Aimee's contribution basket in the meantime.

I finished my last unit for the morning without bothering to spot-check it. I was probably just as excited as the lizards, if not more so. Amazing, isn't it? I was excited to feed a couple of dangerous predators. I guess in the few months since I've met the Isians, I finally reached the point where I could truly say I felt no fear from them. I had realized this lying in bed one night when, unable to sleep, I stared at the ceiling and attempted to justify why.

Respect was one reason. I certainly respected their speed, strength, teeth, and venom glands (never seen that one and never intended to), but those kinds of respect are visceral and unsustainable. You can respect a tiger's ability to kill you without respecting it as an equal. So I valued the Isians' intelligence. I could look them eye and say I respected them as a fellow intelligent being on this little planet Earth.

I couldn't sleep when I came to that answer. I tossed around and raked my pillow in obscene positions trying to find comfort. The notion disturbed me too much because I couldn't resolve it with the other part of Isian nature: the animalism that imprisoned them to be uncultured, uncultivated, uncivilized, unsophisticated, and... na&iumlve.

Look, in a day and age where you had to give away millions of dollars in prizes to even garner a simple "thank you," the lizard slobbered all over me just because I brought them something to eat. Not Russian caviar sandwiched between filet mignon and dipped in fucking gold, but cantaloupe and honeydew for Christ's sakes. Cheap, old, and mushy ones, at that. But I know once I gave these pieces-of-shit fruits to them, they'll think I'm Santa Claus and lick my face until my skin pruned. Guaranteed. No sentient being should be that simple-minded.

They were loveable because they weren't human. Like pets.

So I didn't fear them because they were smarter than animals. I also didn't fear them because they were as dumb as animals. I struggled to reconcile the contradiction. A pair of sleeping pills finally gave me the solution. I didn't revisit the topic.

All I cared about while I was finishing my work was that I wanted to give Basil and Tia their treats as soon as possible.

I locked my terminal and hustled to the Aimee to get the melons. They were the only inhabitants of her basket when I came, and even the mutant watermelon was missing. She handed me the fruits with an obligatory but smug smile and winked when I left with the melons barely in my arms. As a matter of personal pride, I had to hurry if I wanted to give them to the Isians before they could discover the wonders of watermelon. I loved Aimee like a friend and all, but goddamn if I wasn't tired of losing to her computerized shenanigans.

The glaring sun and its heat didn't waste any time welcoming me into their sweat-inducing parlor outside. The twins loafed near the maple, as they usually do, one underneath the shade and the other basking on the simmering boulder amid mounds of food. The lizard under the maple looked dejectedly at a pair protein bars on the grass.

The twin on the rock stretched lazily, yawned, and picked up an orange from the pile.

"You know, this is a wonderful fruit," she said.

Basil picked up and started gnawing on one of the bars. "Oh?" he mumbled between grunts.

"Yep. It's an orange that's also orange. A fruit that's named after itself. It's so neat."

"If you say so." He spat out the mangled but still unopened bar.

"It is. Did you know that oranges have a lot of ascorbic acid? I read about it."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"It's another name for vitamin C."

"Oh, neat! What's vitamin C?"

"I don't know. But doesn't it sound delicious?"

He nodded in agreement. Tia sat up and held the orange to her nose for a deep sniff, and then stuffed it in her mouth and chewed it whole. After a few seconds, the only remnants of the fruit were bits of juice squirting from her lips to the boulder, to Basil's dejection.

I spotted Aimee's watermelon next to the boulder with the bow still tied around it. Ah-ha, I could win this! I came to the Isians with the melons behind my back. Basil shrieked when he caught my sight, which perked Tia's ears up in attention. She jumped off the boulder, and they both came after me like hungry hyenas.

"Woah, stay guys, stay!" I called out before they can bowl me over. They seized into the ground, scattering up clumps of dirt and grass, and stopped just at me feet. I shook my head and said, "What's the magic word, guys?"

"Please!" they said together.

"Nope, that's not it."

The twins looked at each other with confusion. Tia shrugged and said, "Aardvark?"

"Zebra?" Basil said.

"Airplane?"

"Submarine?"

"Peanut butter?"

"Jelly?"

"Computer?"

"Abacus?"

"Boy?"

"Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy?"

Kolm--... what?

While they were giving random guesses, Tia had slipped behind me. Her shrieks of excitement almost caused me to drop the melons.

"Honeydew!" she cried. Her brother peeked over and just chirped.

I held up the fruits for them. They gawked at the melons with open-mouth salivation, seemingly trying to enforce a restraint. Before long though, they caved in swiped the fruits from my hand. Basil clutched his cantaloupe to his chest and stooped his body low around it. He flicked his ears alert, darted glances around his surroundings like a paranoid pigeon, and backed himself to the tree. He then quickly left Tia and me to the safety of the canopy.

Tia cradled her melon in arms and purred to it. She stroked it and rocked it as if it were a child. She would bring her head down to the honeydew, chirp softly, touch it with her tongue, and rock it some more. It would be a funny sight if it weren't so bizarre. The licks became more frequent and the rocking less, though, and before long, she was slobbering over the fruit in long, sloppy licks. She scratched her teeth on the skin. Love turned into hunger, and she began gnawing.

She took the melon in her claws and, with talons buried into the rind, ripped it in half. Then, after she slurped out the pulp at the centers of the halves, she proceeded to take large bites from the fractured melon, rind and all. She left no traces of the fruit save for a few errant seeds.

"Thanks, Ly-lee," she said with a smack of her lips "That was de-li-cious!"

"Thank you!" a voice called out from the tree.

Tia stood up to grab my shoulders and lick my face. I let her do it for a while since it was a cool distraction from atrocious heat. Neatly, she replaced the sweat on my head with saliva. I finally had to beg her to stop.

I sat down against the maple's trunk to shade myself from the sun. Above, I could hear Basil still munching on his cantaloupe in protracted and deliberate bites, savoring his melon more than his sister did. Tia laid her head on my lap, and I took the opportunity to relax and pet her neck.

"Ly-lee? Could I ask you for some advice?" she asked.

"Sure."

"We're choosing what kind of propulsion system to use for our, but we can't agree which one. My little brother wants to use a Sarmine--"

"Hey, woah, hold it right there," I blurted before she could start rambling. "Your brother already told me about the problem."

"Oh! Well, then could you try to get some sense into him and tell him that K600 is better than the stupid P-70? He'll listen to you."

Oh boy.

"I'll try."

"You're the best, Ly-lee."

The tree rustled with a disturbance that caused me to look up. Basil poked his head down through the leaves. "Hey Sis," he called. "Did you ask Ly-lee about that big, green thing yet?"

"What green thing?"

"That green thing with the bow, near the rock."

Tia propped her head off my lap and looked around in confusion before she spotted the watermelon. "Oh that! No I haven't asked him."

"Well, could you?"

"Okay."

She turned her attention to me and said, "Ly-lee?" oblivious that I had heard everything.

"Hmm?"

"Basil and I were wondering if you could tell us what that big, green thing is over there?" She pointed to the watermelon.

"That? Where'd it come from?"

"I think it was from Arlene." A chirp came out from the tree. "I mean, Aimee. But we don't know what it is."

I waved nonchalantly and said, "Oh, it's nothing. It's just a watermelon."

"That's a watermelon?"

"Watermelon?" came the voice from the tree.

"Hey Basil!" Tia said. "Ly-lee says it's a watermelon!"

Basil jumped down. "Doesn't look like it's filled with water." He went over to the watermelon and started examining it.

"Watermelons aren't really that great," I said.

"Hey, Basil!" Tia called out. "Ly-lee says it isn't good!"

Basil pressed one of ears to the watermelon and jostled it. "Doesn't sound like it has water in it, either." He nosed into the melon and sniffed.

"You better stop him," I said. "It really, really tastes bad. I had some before. Horrible stuff."

"Hey, Basil!" Tia yelled. "Ly-lee says it tastes really, really bad and is horrible!"

With his brows tightened in concentration, he continued taking in the watermelon's scent. "Smells kinda good."

"Basil! Ly-lee said!"

He ignored her and continued his investigation.

Tia grunted and shook her head. "Ugh! He never listens," she grumbled. She ran over to him and started nagging with a series of taps, clicks, whistles, chirps, and barks. Whatever it was she was vocalizing, Basil took no heed in his attention to the watermelon. Eventually, she gave up and chirped one final time before lying down.

After he investigated the melon for another minute, Basil tore the bow off with his teeth and patted the rind. A curling smile formed. He faced his back to the massive melon and flapped the end of his tail on top of it. He tapped it again several more times, the bony protrusion at the edge of his tail producing a meaty thump on the rind, and after he seemed to be satisfied with the sound, he pressed his body low. Then, he wiggled his rump a bit and then raised his tail high into the air. I had an idea what was coming next.

"Little brother, Ly-lee said that watermelons weren't--" Tia started to say as I ran for cover behind the tree. She didn't finish the sentence, and all I heard was a massive crack followed by dull thumps of melon pieces striking the tree.

I peeked out from the protection of the trunk and found the chaotic--and goofy--aftermath of a mammoth mutated watermelon explosion, larger and more devastating than your ordinary store-bought watermelon. Shattered pieces of hard, green rind and juicy bits of melon littered everywhere, the cataclysmic remnants of a once proud and noble fruit. Oh the humanity!

The blast drenched the twins, particularly the unsuspecting Tia, in a translucent layer of juice and ragged red bits of melon flesh. The mess dripped from their bodies and tinted their white scales pink under the sunlight. A large and unbroken piece of the rind had landed on Basil's head and covered his eyes like a poorly fitted helmet. Tia snorted, ejecting a watermelon seed from her nostrils.

"Why'd you do that?" Tia cried. "Now look at us, this is nasty!"

"You took all the food and I'm still hungry," Basil replied. "I want to eat this thing!"

She scorned at her brother and licked a piece of melon off her claws. A smile appeared on her lips. They both started licking the mangled red bits off their bodies with excited chirps, and then went to investigate what was left of the watermelon. Remarkably, despite having a large chunk of itself crushed and scattered from the force of Basil's tail, a good part of the watermelon remained intact in two halves. Each sibling claimed one part and gorged into the fruit with abandon. I could hear the moans of delight and satisfaction as they dined.

Tia swallowed mouthful and whistled to her brother. He didn't respond as his head bored deep into his melon and nearly disappeared.

I called out for their attention. "How's it taste?"

"Oh, this isn't at all bad!" Tia said. She dug into the watermelon and scooped up a handful. "Here, you have to try some!"

"No, that's all right. I'm fine."

"You sure?" She held up the pulp for me and then stuffed it into her mouth when I declined again. She began taking loud bites from thick rind.

"So, how is it compared to honeydew?"

"Ofh, muschf beteprof," she garbled with a mouthful. She swallowed and said it again. "Oh, much better than honeydew!"

"Really?"

"Oh yes! It's so sweet and so soft and so, so good!"

Basil mumbled something from inside his half of the watermelon.

"It's even better than cantaloupe too? How wonderful!"

I sighed and sat back down next to the tree. Damn you Aimee. Damn you!

The watermelon didn't survive much longer against Isian hunger, though it made a heroic effort and hit the twins straight in the gut. After it was over, they sprawled listless on their sides as not to upset their distended stomachs. Basil's tongue hung out from the side of his mouth, his head still partly buried inside a hollowed-out rind, and Tia burped and stroked her belly in contentment.

I didn't take it too hard, though. Despite losing the favors of the fruit to Aimee, I was still pleased with the Isians' delight over the watermelon. It's just something about seeing them happy, like how your dog thinks you're the greatest being on the planet for bringing him some beef jerky. You know, I was glad Tia knocked me senseless that night. Had that not happened, I would have never established a relationship with the Isians, a relationship I was beginning to cherish. Watching the Isians spread blissfully under the torpid sun, I couldn't help but smile.

With nothing else to do and some time yet to kill before lunch was over, I picked up a good-sized stick from the ground that dropped when Basil climbed off the tree. I palmed it a bit. Long and narrow but with solid weight--a nice throwing stick if you had a dog. Not thinking much of it more than that, I threw it out into the distance.

I was surprised when it came back to me, except in the mouth of one of the Isians. The stick dropped on my lap, and the twins sat on their haunches with looks of canid anticipation. So I picked it up and threw it again.

And again.

And again.

I didn't stop. The Isians would never allow it. Yelping, howling, tackling, shrieking, whistling, and laughing, they beamed onto the stick like a solitary object of worship, all the troubles and evils in the world dissolved with through the power of a wooden rod. It's amazing how the greatest delight came with the simplest dance of the catch, a rhythm, I suppose, they had listened to for eons since their ancestors first walked the earth. It made them happy. It made me happy.

I would be drenched, dehydrated, exhausted, and over an hour late for work. I would lose pay, go home to an aching back, and collapse from heatstroke. But I didn't care. It didn't matter. None of it mattered so long I held that maple stick.

4. Bedrooms, bed sheets, and bedfellows.

Chapter 4.1

The PA system had an extra dose of saccharine in her voice:

"All personnel, please report to your administrators now. Draft procedures will be begin in twenty minutes. Personnel groups are to be identified at this time. Thank you."

Ah, drafting day. The wholly unique and utterly pointless Summit original.

Lines of employees began forming in the ancillary corridors and off-rooms that connected the labs, with each individual filtered and separated by position. You had your uppity Primary Engineering fellows occupying the relatively comfortable staff rooms, your Secondary Engineering drones crammed in tight hallways that spidered out from main labs (one of them was a maintenance passageway), and your tertiary staff and robots milling about scattered in a jumbled pile in the lobby or wherever else they could be crammed into. The Primary Sigma boys, of course, where nowhere to be found near the riff-raff.

"Drafting day," as we called it (the actual name for the event escapes me), was a drill executed biannually at Summit. It wasn't a safety drill for fire, earthquakes, or whatnot--those concerns were too unimportant for Tetra. The drill was for, no bullshit, espionage. Seriously. So in the event Summit is attacked by rival bands of flipped-out corporate ninja spies bent on stealing our secrets, destroying our important projects, or putting clear plastic wrap around the bowls of all the bathroom toilets, we totally would be prepared... by standing around a hallway and having roll call. I never questioned Tetra's methods, for that would be like questioning the Pope.

Well, yeah. I got paid to do it, so why complain? Easy money. I was too poor to make a fuss.

"Goddamn you fucks!" Mark bellowed at the line. Drafting days improved his disposition quite a bit. "Get in the goddamn line so I can finish this goddamn report, you assholes!"

"Hey Mark, how's that new date of yours last night? Heard she was a real biter!" someone called out to a sea of laughter. I didn't know the entire story, but I gathered Mark had an incident the previous night involving his newest lady friend, some sort of foreplay, teeth, and a trip to St. Lucy's.

Mark fumed his face red, but otherwise said nothing.

Security guards began their phase of the drill and swept along the corridors to inspect employees with baseline scanners. Occasionally, they would tag an individual out of the line and take them away for mock search and interrogation. They picked out at least two dozen people, even though only one "simulated hostile" was in our group. Why expend the effort for positive identification when picking people out at random worked just as well? That was the Summit engineering way.

While the security force was taking turns roughing up the employees, I heard a familiar "click-clack" echoing along hallway. I across and found the expected culprit.

I could see, even at this distance, that the Isian was distinctively female, but not from her shapely figure, girlish mannerisms, or feminine gait (because let's be honest, Isians have none of those). Even after all this time, I couldn't tell the damned difference between Isian males or females on appearances alone. Tia came with a novel solution: clothing. Ingenious for a lizard, anyway. It was dark velvet collar that Arlene apparently gave her. That's it. It's simple, but it made a good match against her white neck. I guess that no matter the species, a girl just needs to make herself feel pretty sometimes. I don't know about anyone else, but I thought it was cute.

She wove and pushed through between the rows of peoples and, every so often, would stop and scan through the throng. She came to the line for my group and then spotted me, and she lifted herself on twos and used her arms to shove obstacles from her path. Mark groaned and gripped my arm when he saw the Isian making her way towards us.

"Son of a bitch, what the hell is that thing doing here? I can't do my work with goddamn animals in this place."

"Aw, but she likes you. Tackling people is a sign of respect in Isian culture."

"Like hell it does. I'm tired of this bullshit and I don't need fucking lizards to make things better."

"Now that's not nice at all."

"Shut up. I have to finish this crap, and I'm not going to be bothered by you or your damned lizards."

Tia strangely disregarded the pets she was receiving and came up to me. She ignored the rub I gave her head and said, "Please come with me?" in an unusually straightforward manner.

"I can't. I'm busy waiting here for the next hour."

"You can skip it. Come with me. Please?"

"I'll get in trouble, Tia. I have to stay here."

She reached behind her neck and pulled out a small paper card that was strapped to her collar. A holographic film bearing Tetra's logo and a lengthy serial number shimmered on the surface. She took the card, pulled off the film, and rubbed onto my chest until it stuck. "There," she said with a final pat, "now you don't have to. Please come with me now?"

I glanced to Mark, who had been observing us. I had expected him to fume with some ultimatum, but he just shook his head at me. I nodded to Tia, and she clicked her tongue and yanked me out of the line by my hands.

"What's this about anyway?" I asked.

"I need to talk to you."

She dragged me out from the hall, across the empty lobby, and through the mazes of the Spire's gut--her destination known only to herself. We passed several security guards on their patrol, but they ignored us. Since all the elevators, automated walkways, and transportation tubes were shut down for the day, the trek very quickly took a toll on my lungs and legs.

"Slow down, Tia! I can't keep up with you!"

She paid no mind and continued towing my increasingly leaden body.

I found myself going through the administrative office spaces, a hell of winding passageways cramped with little rooms and cubicles where business majors came to die. They were empty for drafting day, the bulk of the staff paid to stay home, and the void leeched out the sounds into a freaky echo. Eventually, we reached a dead end past the office of the senior manager, a windowless terminus where the lighting from the end of the hall diffused into a monochromatic soup. I slumped against the wall, next to a fire alarm, and sucked in nice cool breath of mildew and carpet detergents.

"So what is it that you needed to talk to me about?" I asked when my lungs refilled.

Tia sat away from me in an outline against the distant lights, her hind legs tucked to her sides and her tail curled around her body. She held her head low and she stared off down the hall. I crept up to her side. Emptiness had bleached her expression as clean as her scales.

"Tia? Is something wrong?"

She didn't respond and continued staring out to nothing. That disturbed me more than anything else did. I moved my hand behind her, hesitated for a second, and rubbed her back. That was the catalyst it took to have her explode.

"Oh Ly-lee!" she cried, bursting into a shower of tears.

Her screech jabbed into my ears, and then she wallowed in teeth-clacking whimpers. A waterfall of tears streamed down her cheeks and detoured around the side of her neck. Before I could react, she clutched my arm, wrapped her body around--knocking me to floor on my butt--and straddled my lap. She clamped onto my chest and sobbed into my left shoulder.

Instinct told me to hug and comfort her, but I didn't know what to do beyond that. Sure, it's been a dream of mine for a girl to cry upon my shoulder so I could be the hero, but now that it's happened, the next course of action escaped me. Plus I'd figure she'd be human. But I knew I had to--wanted to--make her stop. I couldn't bear to hear her cry much longer.

Tentatively, I wrapped my arms around her neck and stroked the back of her head beneath her frill. I could feel her tears warming my shoulders. "Shhhh... it's okay." I said. "It's okay. Just take a take a deep breath and calm down. It's all right."

Her whimpers sedated a bit, but the tears kept flowing. I held her head to my shoulder until the crying stopped and left behind a shell of sniffling fits. I could still feel her ragged breathing rippling through our chests. I held her a little while longer so she could calm. I chinned her head up and wiped away the tears that pooled in the bags of her eyes and on her face. I cradled the sides of her head and lined it up so I could look into her blue, laden eyes and asked her if she felt better. She nodded.

I lifted a stray tear from her cheek with my sleeve. "Tell me what's wrong."

"It's horrible! They're going to kick us out!"

She struggled to force out the words between stutters, and the last few provoked her eyes to well up again. It took steel nerves and an act of God to keep back a new deluge and have her explain the bizarre situation.

"It was yesterday, I was sleeping around here in of the rooms around here that no one uses. I woke up and heard some people talking. I didn't recognize them at first, but then I listened harder and I heard Arlene. She was talking to some people. They a bunch of things that I really didn't understand. But I knew one thing that they talked about, Ly-lee, I really did. They said that we didn't belong in the lab and wanted to take us out. From our home! We didn't do anything wrong, honest we didn't. We were good! Really good! They're going to kick us out, and I don't know what to do! Horrible, horrible!"

I couldn't believe what I just heard. The administration treated the Isians as virtual royalty here in Summit with their every whims and desires indulged and their every peculiarities tolerated. Now after all this, they're just going to shove them out? What the fuck was going on here?

"Are you sure about this, Tia?"

"Yes! My ears don't lie. I heard it, I really did!"

"Let me understand this right. After all you and your brother did for this place, they're just going to forbid you from Summit? Just like that?"

She sniffled and shook her head. "They want us to keep working. But we can't live here anymore. They want us out from Summit when we're not working anymore."

Now it made sense! Of course they would want them out of Summit, that's just a common sense that's been a long time coming. As much as I liked the Isians, they really were a handful, and I'm sure that Tetra would prefer them to reside away from its largest and most expensive development facility. But she probably didn't get the entire context before freaking out.

"It's okay," I said. "They don't hate you. No one does." Well, no one but Mark, anyway.

"Then why do they want us to leave?"

"Well, everyone has a home outside of Summit. I have a home, Arlene has a home, and even Aimee has a home she goes to sometimes for maintenance outside of Summit. They want you to have a home too. A good home, a nice one."

"But this is our home."

"Tia, do you know why they want you to move out from here? Because it's a horrible place to live. It's cold, it's too bright, and there's many things here that could hurt you. Plus, isn't the food bad?"

She pondered it, and then she agreed with pensive nod.

"Well, that's why they're doing this. They got a much better home somewhere else. They're kicking you out of Summit, yeah, but kicking you out to a much better place. They didn't do this because they hate you, but because they love you." I rubbed her smooth back. "Hey, it's going to be all right. Trust me."

She shook her head. "I don't know if I want to go anywhere else, Ly-lee. The city's too big and too loud."

"Don't worry, I'm sure everything is going to be fine," I said. Hell, just thinking of the sweet new pad Tetra had in store them made me wish I were a giant lizard.

She twisted her head. "You think so?"

"Yep. It's going to be great. Hell, your new place is going to be better than the dump I live in, I guarantee it."

"Oh Ly-lee, you don't live in a dump!" she said with a chirp, temporarily forgetting she was supposed to be crying.

"Have you ever seen it? It really is."

"It's not!"

"Oh yeah? You can stay there a few days there and we'll see if you can still say that. I tell you, you'll be screaming back out to live in a zoo." I squeezed her by the shoulder. "Come on now, everything will be all right, yeah?"

"I think so." She smiled. "Thank you, Ly-lee. You're so nice."

She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me. I rubbed her back with my right hand while gripping the floor with the other.

"Hey, no problem," I said. The shrill of a security alarm fired off in the distance and sputtered to us like tinnitus. "Shoot, I have to get back before Mark starts throwing fits again. You'll be okay?"

She nodded, got off my lap, waited for me to leave.

"Well, maybe you take me back? Because I'm completely lost here."

With a chirp and a smile, she took my hands.

Chapter 4.2

My back. My legs. My arms. Even my head. They were all sore. Sore and wonderfully debilitating.

A thunderhead had materialized early in the morning like some foul demon of cloud, soot, and rage that saw the nice summer day and thought, "No, this wouldn't do. Lyle Ivano cannot have a pleasant day." It shredded apart the hot sky and started pulverizing the city with torrential fury.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Rain stomped on the roof louder than a bungalow of fucking kindergarteners on punch. It clacked and clacked and clacked and clacked my eardrums, masked only when thunder shattered through, but then they'd continue their incessant dancing again. Fuck me for getting a top-floor room because I want to have a good view of the trash and bums. I took solace in the understanding that the racket, however insufferable, was at least sane.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Sane compared to that motherfucking drip.

Drip. Drip.

Six hours. Six goddamn hours those drips have been assaulting me. Curse them all, each stray drop of water that wormed its way through the roof and collected in a pool in the ceiling. Each and every one that snuck through a stress fracture in the bloated stucco. Each single one that kamazied straight onto my floor and crashed with auditory madness.

Drip.

Blasted weather. Blasted, wretched weather. I couldn't stand it. The stupid rain beat me down with exhaustion and pain and locked me into this damned hole. Here I was, a full-grown and otherwise healthy adult, five seconds away from tearing my hair off from the god-awful rain.

Curse the idiot who invented it. He must have been an engineer.

I strung up an arm to the nightstand and pulled out the bottle of sleeping pills I kept in the drawer. It felt too light and kept mute like a bratty kid no matter how hard I shook it. I threw the goddamn thing across the room and out the hallway.

I had chucked in some antivirals to combat the cold, but it didn't help much. Like an unwelcomed houseguest, the nasty fiend was here to stay. I considered calling up Aimee to tell her I'd be out sick, but decided against it. I was eating a sick day either way, and telling them why will just give them a good reason to raise my health insurance premiums.

Noon maybe, or some time close enough, and I threw middle finger at the bed and the ceiling and willed out of bed to gargle some mouthwash, and I then went to the living room. I was pretty sure that green mouthwash wasn't supposed to turn red after you gargled it. Whatever. I was too light-headed to care. I collapsed into the couch and didn't bother untangling my limbs.

I turned on the computer to distract myself from the storm and sickness. I believe I ended up watching a Sunday evangelism program. Probably the usual fire and brimstone and sin and Satan and stuff. It was all the same. Just so long it kept me occupied, I could stand patronization from a humble octogenarian who made more in three words than I made in three years.

Come to think of it, I was in entirely the wrong profession.

It was late in the evening when I came-to. The rain had since tempered, but clung on like a vicious little dog. My delirium had queued up some sort of teeny-bopper melodrama that was now parading itself on the screen. I turned it off and staggered into the kitchen for something to eat. Maybe some chicken soup, I could have really gone for some chicken soup. That is, had there been any. The closest I stocked was a canister of irregularity supplements. Well it'll have to do, I thought. Mix it up with boiling water and some sugar, and it'll be reasonably tasty. I spooned the ingredients into the oven and set it away. In a few minutes, I would have the full, delicious flavor of a full-day's worth of fiber...

Crack. Everything went dark. The lights, the oven, my sense of direction. Son-of-a-...

Stupid, goddamn rain. Not content with repossessing physical well-being, my mental acuity, and my money, it now wanted to take away my delicious, gelatinous fiber soup, too! Son of a bitch!

Fumbling like a helpless idiot in the dark, I managed to find the intercom (which was attached to a backup circuit) and called up the manager to ask what was wrong.

"The power ain't coming on tonight, buddy. Fuggedaboutit and go to sleep."

"But..."

Click.

Sigh. It's the story of my life. Sitting on the floor, miserable, coughing, and in pain while a vat of fibrous soup remained half-boiled and unloved.

I hated the rain.

While I was wallowing in self-pity, a sound tapped through the storm. Something sharper and more deliberate than raindrops. I closed over one of my ears to make sense of it.

Thud!

What the hell?

The door banged. Someone... something was pounding it, and it didn't sound like it was trying to say "hello." The door shook and buckled as the pounding intensified. I scrambled over to the entry panel and jammed on it until I remembered that the power had died and taken out the visitation camera. I tapped the door two times. The thumping stopped.

"Hello?" I called out. "Anyone there?" No answer.

Cautiously, I unbolted the door and manually slid it open a crack, just space enough for me to peek out an eyeball. The hallway ate the light and vision and offered no answers. I slid the door open and stuck my head out.

Before I could scan around once, the door was ripped open and my back found itself kissing the floor. The pain took a second to surge through my spine, but I was barely conscious of it because I was too busy panicking. I could hear my assailant enter the room.

God, I was going to die. Some hoodlum, taking advantage of the power outage, was going to rob me blind and kill me.

My breath was too fearful to exit the safety of my lungs. My diaphragm locked up. And more than that, someone paralyzed my chest by pressing on it.

He was kneeing me in the chest and holding me down. This was it. My throat was going to be slashed open. I'll die gurgling and choking on my own blood. I felt a warm breath against my face. He was going to do it. I'm dead. Gone. My head lost control and I screamed.

Suddenly, I was drowned with the wetness on my face. My blood. I was feeling my own blood. Lord help me, he did it. I'm dead!

And then the lights turned on.

"Ly-lee!"

---

My back. My legs. My arms. My head. Even my empty lungs. They were all sore. Sore and wonderfully debilitating.

The adrenaline that coursed through my veins tapered off and left me to withdraw into a spastic, anxious mess, far worse than I had been this morning. The throbbing tug-of-war between my tired muscles and my hyper-stimulated nerves wrecked havoc on my body

And now I had a pair of bright blue eyes staring down at me.

I came to my senses and squirmed back to my and to what was left of my dignity. My eyes adjusted to the room in a blurred mess. I swore I saw an Isian. But it couldn't be. I clamped down my eyelids to blot out the backed-up fluids and blinked numerous times. A pair of white and blue lizards, dripping water on my floor, sat on their haunches and looked at me with wide smiles.

"Wha... what?" I garbled. "Basil? Tia?"

"Hey Ly-lee!" they greeted together. They got up and shook themselves dry, spraying everything with cold rainwater.

Yep, it was them.

I shook off the last vestiges of incredulity. The Isians where here. In my apartment. In my home! In the middle of the night! Wet!

"What... what the heck are you guys doing here?" I said.

The twins clicked to each other and laughed.

"Oh silly!" Basil said.

"We're here to live with you!" said Tia.

"Come again?" I said. I just noticed they had knapsacks slung on their backs. They dropped their bags on the floor and wandered into the living room. Basil began nosing into a cabinet.

"We came to live with you, Ly-lee," Basil said. "Just like you said we could."

"What? Since when?"

"Remember?" Tia said. "In drafting day. You told me we could stay here a in your house."

Basil chirped. "Yes, yes you did, Sis told me!"

Drafting day? What the hell did I say two days ago? I grounded the bones of my wrist into my temples to keep distracting stimuli away. Think! Tia took me out of the line and started crying. She said Tetra was moving them out of Summit. I told her it was going to be all right. She hesitated to believe me. I tried to convince her that it'll be better, that'll be even better than my place. She refused to believe that. Then I maintained it was true and that she could see for herself by staying...

God-dammit!

"Hey guys?" I said. "I'm sorry, but there's been a misunderstanding. I didn't really mean that you could actually stay with me."

"Oh, Ly-lee has such a nice place," Tia said. "Doesn't he, little brother?" Her brother whistled and started using the sofa's cushions as a trampoline.

"Hey, hey!" I shouted. I went after them before they could possibly break anything.

Basil picked up the lamp on the side table. "Oh look at this, Tia, isn't this the neatest thing ever?"

I ran over and snatched the lamp away from him.

"Ooo, ooo! Look, little brother! A UH8 wall-mount!" Tia squealed at my computer. She turned it on and began pounding random keys on the console.

"Wait, that's not yours!" I called out with the lamp under my left arm. I shooed her away and turned off the machine. I heard Basil call out from behind.

"Tia! Tia! Look! It's an intercom!" Before I could stop him, he was plugging away at the controls.

"No, no! Don't touch that!"

"Hello? Hello? Earth to Orion's Belt, come in Delta Station."

Tia chattered and pointed to a basket of fruit on the kitchen table. "Oh, Basil, little brother! There's some food!" She hopped over the coffee table and knocked over an empty glass flower vase with her tail. I ran like a madman to catch it before it could roll off to certain oblivion. With the vase in my right hand and the lamp in my left arm, I chased after them into the kitchen.

"Who the hell is this?" I heard a static-coated voice call from the intercom. Frantically, I ran to the com while the twins started rummaging through the fruit basket.

"Hello, this has been another episode of Giant Lizard Theater 4000. Tune in at the same time in never for another great installment. Goodbye!" I paged out and shut down the intercom.

Back at the kitchen, I was too late. The basket was upturned with a large hole on its bottom, and the fruits were gone. The twins were in the corner somewhere and left behind the sound of munching. Exasperated, I dropped the vase and lamp on the kitchen table and slumped back into the living room sofa. This is going to be a long night, I thought. Just then, I heard a shriek followed by the crescendo of dishes clashing on kitchen tiles.

A long night.

I left the twins to their havoc in the kitchen. It was late, I was tired, and it would've been pointless. They'll come out when they became bored with the backdrop. They can have their fun, but as soon as I found the energy to remove myself from this chair, there will be order. Oh yes, regulation and power. A man's house is his castle, and I am King Lyle. I shall demand--nay, command!--respect. Woe to those unfortunate souls that dare rebel against my supreme will!

I was quite delusional when I was sick.

Sure enough, the twins wandered back into the living room after having their fill of my pantry, their hyperactivity bogged down by round bellies. Basil sagged down randomly on floor, not bothering to find a comfortable spot, and his sister crawled over to me. This was it. It was time to show them who was the man of the house.

I stood up, pumped my arms and pushed out my chest, and immediately coughed out phlegm because of my lung's allergic reaction to machismo. Regaining myself, I steeled my legs in a kingly stance stood like an iron column of authority. I crossed my arms. Crossed arms are authoritative.

"Tiamat!" I called out in an earth-shattering voice. God, I was good. "Young lady! I'll have a w--"

"Ly-lee, do you have any hot chocolate or something? My throat is kinda dry."

"Ah... chocolate? I think I do--" I started in reflex before I caught myself. "Wait! No! Tia, listen!"

"Can you bring me some? I'm awfully thirsty." She propped down onto the couch and turned the computer on.

"Tia, I--"

"Thanks Ly-lee."

I went to the kitchen to find my can of chocolate mix.

At least, I swore I had a can. I nearly ripped apart the kitchen trying to find that damned thing. It just wasn't there. I had cans of damn near everything else but chocolate. Well, I thought, I'm an engineer, so I can engineer together a suitable alternative. I rummaged through the pantry. Black tea, prune juice, ginger extract, orange tea, cinnamon. You know, if you mixed them you could probably come up with something similar. Add it a small pack of gelatin and you could...

Wait a minute! What the hell was I doing? I was supposed to kick out unwanted guests, not pamper them! I dropped the canisters and stormed out of the kitchen.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the Isians and enjoyed their company. But this was too much even for me. I couldn't have them barging in unexpectedly--in the middle of the night no less!--and happily accept them as my new roommates. No, this place was barely enough for a full-grown adult me, let alone a me plus two high-maintenance reptilian creatures. I'm sorry, but they had to go. It was nothing personal, just life.

With a newfound confidence, I took in a deep breath and stepped into the living room to do the deed. The lights were off as well as the computer. I could barely make out a snoring Basil curled up in sleep on the carpet in the middle of the room. A tap on my shoulder startled me.

"Ly-lee, do you have any blankets?"

Tia was standing on two legs and looking up at me.

"No, I don't have any extra," I said. "Sorry."

She shrugged and turned her head to the side. "Oh well. That's okay."

"Listen, Tia, I have to say something."

"Oh, me too. Can I go first?"

I agreed, and she opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She closed it, rubbed her hands together in a nervous tic, and paced about the room. Finally, with her eyes averted away, she said, "Ly-lee, I don't know how to say this really well, but I want to... I want to thank you. Thank you for everything."

"Thank me? For what?"

"You've been so nice to me and my little brother. You shared your food with us, and your playtime, and lots of things. Now you're sharing your home too." She looked up to me with her round eyes and smiled. "That's the best thing anyone had done for us, ever."

I didn't say anything.

She leaned over her brother and cooed. "Poor thing, he must be so cold and tired from the rain. That was a long walk."

"Where did you guys come form?"

"Summit."

Summit was over 45 kilometers from here. Surely they didn't slog through that entire distance in this godforsaken thunderstorm, did they?

"You walked all the way from Summit? Really?"

"Um-hmm. You live awfully far away, Ly-lee. I wanted to use the train, but we didn't know how to use it, so we walked instead. We left in the morning so that we can get here early, but then the rain came. It made it very hard. And very, very cold." She lovingly stroked Basil's cheek. "We're so tired."

I said nothing.

"But now that we made it here," Tia continued, scampering to me, "everything's better!" She pressed her hands against my chest and cocked her head the side. "Because we have Ly-lee!"

She rose and touched my cheek with the end of her muzzle like she wanted to lick me, but instead, she pursed her lips and placed a little kiss. I never felt this before, not from an Isian, and I forgot to breathe when she pulled her lips away and until she spoke again.

"Thank you, Ly-lee. You're the best friend"--she emphasized with a lick--"I know." She tucked her arms shyly to her sides and smiled at me. She bobbed her head and crept back to her sleeping brother.

I stood there like a flabbergasted idiot.

She squeaked and turned around. "Oh! You wanted to say something."

"Oh. Yeah. I did."

She nodded for me to continue.

"Yeah..." An annoying itch tingled at the back of my neck. I tried to slap it away. "I don't have any chocolate. I have some tea though, if you'd like."

"Oh, that's okay. I'm tired anyway. I think I'll sleep now." She gaped her mouth open in a toothy yawn, crawled to Basil, and wrapped herself over his curled form. "'Night, Ly-lee."

"Good-night."

I stayed there and watched them sleep for the longest while before I went back to bed.

---

I didn't get much sleep. I had too much in my head. I still couldn't comprehend what had just happened in the past hour of that rainy, gloomy night. Something barbed itself into my mind and refused to let go. No, not because I had new, unexpected roommates. Or that these roommates were wild and unpredictable animals. Or even the fact I didn't know the first goddamn thing on how to care for them. No, none of those.

I was kept up all night because she called me a friend.

"Best friend." It was something that no one has called me in years. At least, called me and actually meant it.

Maybe they can stay for a little bit, just a few days until they got their bearings. Maybe a few weeks. A month, at the very most.

I picked up the empty bottle from the hallway and shook it into my mouth, hoping to shake out some of the magic pharmaceutical dust. I sat on the edge of my bed, the beat of the rain soothing my nerves, and contemplated my new bedmates, these feral colleagues of mine.

My life just got a whole lot more interesting.