FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Interlude: A Bit of Claret

Zach rifled through the hamper of dirty laundry, overflowing with his roommate's sweaty jocks and tank tops as well as his own reeking socks. One of 'em was definitely going to get stuck with the wash this weekend, and Zach knew it would be him.

It was damn near impossible to get ahold of Boris on the weekends these days. Zach was proud of him at first, of coming out. It had all been so sudden, and the man had played his cards so close to his chest that Zach never suspected he was homosexual. After he did, he seemed more open, confident, and just plain happy.

Now, though, the guy had gone crazy with the lifestyle, spending 1-2 hours at the gym every day except weekends, which he spent at the club. He'd grown out a beard, spent a fortune in clothes, pierced his right ear, and had taken to gelling his hair and styling it into a foppish, messy quiff that never stayed tame. Allegedly, Boris now spent the evenings after his workouts relaxing and unwinding or boning up on job training, but Zach never got to see it since he was out picking up primetime pax, slang for passengers, around.

He imagined the following would happen: First, Boris would come back from his 'short' 1-hour gym session on Friday evening. He'd gobble up a big bowl of something with meat in it, then go to the Hair of the Dog. Second, he'd reappear sometime the following day in his bed, club gear chucked on the floor, sweaty musk percolating through the air, and sleep well into the afternoon. Third, he'd wake up, shower, chow down again, and head back to the club. Fourth, he'd be sore and tapped out on Sunday, and if he got up at all he'd be one grumpy sunuvabitch. If Zach was lucky, Boris would get a good sleep session in at some point, but not too much, giving him time to focus the Russian on answering a few questions before he ran off or growled his displeasure and cut off the conversation then and there.

And Zach had a lot of questions, one being, 'If you're on the Keto diet, why do I never see vegetables in the fridge?' Boris' grocery runs brought back ridiculous amounts of meat, filling up the fridge and leaving little room for a more balanced diet. He was fastidious about leaving Zach a space of his own in the fridge, but c'mon, meat in the veggie crispers? In the door bins? In the freakin' butter tray? At least Zach had almost the entire freezer space to himself, since Boris somehow gobbled through a full fridge of fresh meat every week.

Another question was, 'Why do I always end up doing the laundry?' The answer was, of course, 'Because he knows you'll always do it', but to hear it directly from him would be nice. He would never admit this to another soul, but after growing up alongside only boys and men and living in a dorm with only men, he found the scent of men to be reassuring, familiar, even erotic. Just not to this degree. This pile of laundry was getting putrid.

After an eternity holding his breath, then gulping in air between gouts of stale sweat stink and man musk, Zach finally found what he was looking for in a pair of uniform pants from three days ago: An E-Cigarette. He held it under the single overhead light of the laundry room and saw that it still had a little bit of juice left.

He'd gotten better. He'd slowed down consumption of Nicotine, ditching conventional cigarettes two years ago. The patches didn't do it for him, but the E-cig did, and he'd gotten down to a craving every couple of days. While fumbling for the thing in his old pants was a pain in the ass, the fact that he'd gone days without noticing it felt good. Of course, the warm nicotine mist suffusing his needy lungs while he stood on the balcony felt better.

A voice broke his fugue.

"Zak Zak. Mister Zachary Wozniak. Is time to go, zabko!"

It was the voice of his uncle, recorded one morning years ago in his comic, sing-song voice. The sound file had lived in three phones now and was still his alarm message. Radzimir was a pain in the ass on most days, but he'd raised three boys on his own, none of which were even his child, and each had only turned out half crazy, not bad for a man who arrived in a ship in 1978 with only a fake Adidas tracksuit and a crumbling pair of shoes to his name. He had a way with cadence and intonation that would've made him a great voice actor, were he ever so inclined, but took up the toolbox instead.

He opened his phone and went to The App, already stepping inside and reaching for his car keys. The App let him decide when he wanted to work or not, but the banks and landlords always seemed to demand more. Evening prime time was coming, and it was time to hit the streets.

Twirling his car keys in one hand and checking his phone in the other, he skipped down the stairs when he heard that sweet pinging sound. There was a fare right here, close to home. Perfect! He wouldn't have to fight street traffic for the pickup. His pride and joy, not to mention his ball and chain, was waiting for him: A black Subaru WRX, polished to a mirror shine. She wasn't the prettiest car, with her pinched and crowded face and the big hole in her forehead, but she was nimble, reliable, efficient, quick, and most importantly his.

He climbed in, the engine starting itself as soon as he slid into the bucket seat. He racked his phone and put on some background music, a playlist of Japanese jazz fusion. Passengers really responded well to that and CityPop, but he hadn't found anything Polish yet that bumped up his driver rating.

As he approached the pinned location just a block away, he saw a very angry looking forty-something Caucasian woman with a bob hairdo and blond highlights rolling her eyes and shifting in place. She was dressed in combat boots, digital camo BDUs, and tactical gear, but curiously no nametag or any other indicators of a military outfit. She was also in a very animated phone conversation with someone.

He pulled up right next to her, but she kept yelling in the phone. He waited. 20 seconds passed, then 40, then a full minute. This was getting awkward, but among the various metrics he was evaluated on was pickup time, and for such a close passenger every wasted second endangered his rating. Anxious, he got out of the car and went to the rear-right door, then opened it for her. She turned a quick glance to him and held a hand over the phone's receiver.

"Karen?"

"It's about Goddamn time, you're late."

Oh boy, Asspax alert. This wasn't Zach's first time with a difficult passenger. He just closed the door behind her while she pivoted her rage back to the phone. Jogging back to the driver's seat, he wasted no time in getting underway. The sooner this was done, the better, and... Wait, what?

The App didn't display a destination pin. Had this lady forgotten to put one in? No, she'd have had to put in something just to hail a driver. Maybe it was system glitch? The App didn't know what to do with the situation either, showing a generic loading indicator.

"You get me a pin on that user's position or put me through to someone who can! I don't care if you have to wake up the C.E.O.! I guaran-goddamn-tee you that I can keep cranking up the heat until I have what I want or you melt into a greasy little puddle, you faceless, inconsequential shit."

Suddenly, something happened that Zach had never seen before. Some operator at Central manually entered and displayed a destination pin, and that pin was moving.

"Well? What are we waiting for? Get moving! And turn that shitty music off!"

Easy, Zach, she's not mad at you, she's mad at everyone. Just get her to this crazy moving pin and it'll all be over. He turned off the Jazz Fusion soundtrack, leaving the car in tense silence. It was like having a knife to his back.

He thought of why this lady might be so upset. Maybe she'd caught her husband cheating, or was in the process of doing so? Or maybe she was a cop in pursuit of a suspect, which is why they'd violated a user's privacy for her, but then why'd she hail a cab?

He'd been so preoccupied with her psychotic, murderous glare that he almost didn't notice a car behind him, a looming, angular, and heavily modified Toyota FJ Cruiser that could only be described as a Suburban Assault Vehicle.

"Eyes on the road, Polock," Karen needled.

He'd been raised in America, but that didn't matter to someone like her. He refocused on his driving, and he must've been doing OK because she hadn't criticized-

"Can we pick up the pace? I swear, you're driving like fuckin' grandma."

She tucked her head toward a radio receiver clipped to her shirt pocket.

"Ease up, don't crowd us. If the quarry sees you he'll bug out. And tell Carl not to bother polishing his gun, cause if he doesn't get a better one next time he's not going on another hunt!"

They made their way downtown, the traffic picking up and protecting Zach from any fresh barbs since there wasn't anything he could do about congestion. The Suburban Assault Vehicle had disappeared, either lost in traffic or just keeping their distance as Karen had demanded. She saw the pin inching away faster than they were approaching. Whoever they were following was also in a vehicle.

"Damn it, this is no good! Come on! Use the alleyway to cut through, use your brain! Do something!"

"Ma'am, it looks like they're going toward 408. There's always traffic there, so we should catch up to them in a couple minutes."

"Ooh, we should catch up to them in a couple minutes," She mockingly imitated him. "Well what if he's not going to 408? Look, that person I was with on the phone? I only let them waste so much of my time cause I couldn't shoot them. You, on the other hand..."

"Oh, shit!" Zach heard himself say as he heard steel sliding on steel behind him, a bulge in the seat leather pushing into the small of his back.

This was a clear violation of the law and the terms of service, but who was going to enforce that in this situation? He was sure the company would like him to suspend service to this violator, but they didn't have a sociopathic gun-toting woman in their car, so he decided to take the lesser of two risks and pull into an alleyway.

He didn't drive down alleyways to save time, at least, not usually. Half the time there'd be a truck or some loose cargo blocking the way because that's what alleyways were for, logistics. Blessedly, this alley wasn't blocked and he was able to get through, cutting across a snarl of traffic. His maneuver brought him very close to the pin, and he thought he recognized the car.

Yes, there could be no doubt who they were following. It was a tornado red Golf GTI with a Hair of the Dog bumper sticker and a row of scratches in the paint of the driver's side door where Boris said a bear had tried to get in. They were following his roommate. Boris, what did you do to set this lady off?

To Karen the Psycho's credit, she'd been right to doubt Zach's prediction. Boris did not go towards the 408 interchange but instead turned left toward the seaport. That was strange, since there was basically nothing in that direction but port authority offices, docks, ships, and warehouses. Had his company put him on a new assignment? Maybe he'd been padding his income by smuggling contraband, and that's how he was able to afford all the meat? Ooh, maybe the meat was the contraband. Zach loved a good conspiracy, and here was one unfolding before his eyes.

Boris pulled into the parking lot of one of the dockside warehouses and Zach was about to follow him in when Karen ordered him to stop at the gate. Without so much as a thank you, she got out, then turned down the street and waved. The Suburban Assault Vehicle, with its supplemental body armor, bulletproof windows, cages over the headlights rumbled forward and shuddered to a stop. There was livery on the passenger and driver doors for an organization he'd never heard of before.

The emblem was an un-subtle image of a wolf's head with a knife stuck into its forehead, labeled 'Knights of Augustus, Recte Et Noster'. KAREN. The asspax who'd just stuck a gun to his back and left him a 10% tip and a 2-star rating, she was named Karen as well, right?

Hoo, boy, this was a lot to take in. Boris was involved in something heavy, and he'd pissed off Karen, who owned some kind of merc outfit named KAREN, or maybe this was some ancient knightly order where every member was a woman named Karen. But what was the wolf stabbing all about? Was it just something menacing to stick on a logo? And what did Recte Et Noster mean?

The four men that emerged from the assault vehicle didn't seem to be Karens, so that ruled out one theory. In fact, they didn't even look like soldiers, aside from the fact that they all had combat boots and digital camo BDUs, as well as some tactical gear and Kevlar vests. One wiry, stubble-faced guy with frizzy brown hair had a grenade harness, but instead of grenades he'd stuck cans of G Fuel in the loops. A young, round-faced fellow with a dusty red beard and a trucker cap looked to be about 280 pounds, not much of it muscle, and had left the lowest straps of his Kevlar vest loose on the sides because they didn't fit around his belly. An older fellow with a salt and pepper beard looked kind of menacing with a pair of aviator glasses on, but he only seemed to be carrying a revolver. In fact, everyone else had AR-15 style rifles except for the older fellow. The last man in the crew looked Asian and had styled hair. Unlike the others he wore all black tactical gear and a black tee shirt instead of a BDU blouse. He also had what Zach swore was a full-size replica of a Final Fantasy VII Buster Sword strapped to his back, only this wasn't some hollow plastic replica. This looked like a real piece of metal and probably weighed a good 80 pounds.

It was clear they were gearing up for war, and that Karen had assembled some posse to kill Boris. Zach didn't know why, but his roommate was in danger and probably didn't know it. Shit! If Boris died, how was he ever going to cover the rent? And what was he going to do with all that meat in the fridge?

Zach had to do something, but what? He wasn't taking on that armored car. It looked like it weighed about as much as the Moon, and probably had worse fuel efficiency. He parked his Subaru a short distance away from the warehouse, then made sure he switched his status to offline in The App so that he didn't get a ping from a passenger while sneaking about.

After waiting for the Knights to leave, Zach made a mad dash across the gravel of the parking lot around the warehouse, then pressed himself against the wall of the building. He'd raised seven kinds of hell as a kid, tearing about at full speed through school hallways and insinuating himself into places that were supposed to be off limits, but he never thought that might be useful at some point. He had soft-soled running shoes and naturally sneaky feet, so when he crept into the building he didn't make a sound on the hard concrete floor.

It wasn't an especially large warehouse, with an open area near the loading bay and a few dozen rows of floor to ceiling commercial shelves filled with cardboard boxes. A few robotic forklifts were parked at the wall near him, and it occurred to him that this was a fulfillment center of some kind. One wall of the building had a stairway and gantry leading to an upstairs office, but it was otherwise a drab and generic place, save for the occupants.

In the open area was Boris and seven other men. He instantly knew that these men were from the mother country or somewhere in the region because of their pale skin, hard-edged facial features, weather-beaten squinty eyes, and shiny jackets always worn open in the front. Zach imagined that these guys were Russian mafia. Maybe Boris secretly worked for them. Boris was seated at a table opposite a middle-aged man with a pronounced combover, a slate gray coat, and a pair of thick-rimmed eyeglasses. As Zach edged closer, he could start to hear their conversation.

Unfortunately it was all in Russian. Whatever they were talking about, though, it looked intense. The guy at the table, clearly the brains, was trying to get something from Boris, something computer related since he'd opened a laptop and turned it so Boris could see the screen. He didn't get a good look at Boris' reactions at first, but then he turned and exposed his profile. His mouth was pulled into a snarl, his arms twitching with rage. The man at the table delighted in this reaction, relishing in Boris' clear impotent rage. Suddenly, Boris started speaking in English. He started laughing. On the heels of that barely contained rage, Zach was sure that Boris had gone unhinged.

"For five years you FSB svolochs have hounded a man who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Now you reappear, again wanting more, always more. In exchange you say you can guarantee my safety? You have no idea what you've stepped into, do you? You have no idea who needs protecting here."

The man in his chair straightened his back and said something to his colleagues in Russian. Boris interrupted him.

"Sevchenko, I'm speaking to you in English because I want you and only you to understand something. You're beaten. You're out of position. This goon squad you brought with you is in the country without documentation, and if they're killed there will be no justice for them, and that blood will be on your hands, not mine."

The man Boris called Sevchenko half grinned, then chuckled.

"I love it when a person gets worn down to their barest, most primal, most desperate state. There's something wonderfully authentic about it. You never know what a man is made of until you've peeled back his flesh. You've grown a spine since we last met, Boris, but even if it were just the two of us, you wouldn't kill me. It's not in your nature."

"You have no idea what's in my nature, and God help you if you try to peel back that flesh," Boris smoldered.

"Say your fuckin' prayers, werewolves!" A shrill voice rang from above. "This is your last day scaring our kids and eating our house pets!"

"Damn it, Karen! We're not in position yet!" One of the knights shouted back.

There was a moment of bewildered silence as Karen revealed herself to the Russian entourage below. Sevchenko's allies lost precious moments trying to figure out what was going on, or what the Americans had even said. Sevchenko himself scrambled behind a stack of pallets and shouted to his men, incredulous at their inaction.

"Chtozh? Delay zvoyu rabotu!"

The frizzy-haired G Fuel commando sauntered out first from behind a stack of boxes, tossing aside an empty can and aiming his AR-15 from the hip, bug-eyed and beaming enthusiastically.

"Woo, yeah! Get some! Who wants a piece?"

The knight's face immediately burst open in a gory, tooth-filled spectacle as one of the Russians fired a compact shotgun into it, but his eager, twitchy corpse squeezed the trigger and, this being an illegally modified fully automatic AR-15 variant with a magazine size of Too Many, fired a long spray of rifle rounds that ricocheted off the ground and shredded the knees and calves of two nearby Russians.

The wounded Russians collapsed, writhed, and screamed, but the knights were still outnumbered and lousy at concealment. G Fuel was no longer in the mood to fight, what with the geyser of blood pouring from the crater where his face used to be. Fat Kid was perhaps the most sensible among them, using a big cardboard box as cover and to steady his rifle from the vantage point of the gantry above. Karen moved continuously, firing short bursts from her weapon, apparently without any regard for how exposed she was while doing so. Cloud Cosplay was at ground level, presumably to get in close and use his sword. He'd emptied a magazine from his AR-15 and was going for the Buster replica on his back. Old Guy was nowhere to be seen.

Sevchenko had picked a particularly bad spot to hold this little meeting, a place with little concealment and even less cover. Two men tried to tip the patio table with the laptop on its side to use as some kind of concealment or cover, but this went about as well as expected, the Knights' rifle rounds punching through them like paper and hitting the Russians behind, the life draining from them in moments. The two men who were cut down at the knees were already dead, finished off by the Knights.

Shotgun Russian spotted Fat Kid and instantly saw the problem in his choice of cover, firing his weapon directly into the cardboard box twice and easily punching through it and its flimsy contents. The portly redhead was wearing Kevlar so none of the pellets struck him in the vitals, but a broad ring of shot and spalling debris tore into his unprotected arms, legs, face, and eyes, knocking him flat on his back in a howl of agony.

"Ouwwwuhgahhd! Existence is suffering! Everything is pain!"

While Shotgun Russian had focused on Fat Kid, though, Cloud Cosplay saw his opening and went for it. A typical and authentic two-handed sword weighs less than 10 pounds for the sake of the wielder's endurance and safety, making the replica Buster Blade just a little heavier than advisable. While he swung the 80-lb behemoth sword a bubbling sound emanated from his right arm, followed by a loud snap that echoed through the room as a cluster of tendons and muscles completely tore through. His face contorted in extraordinary pain, but the massive slab of sharpened steel swung on its arc toward the shotgun Russian's back and there was no stopping it.

The blade cleaved the man's right shoulder and didn't stop cutting until it had gotten to his lower-left abdomen. He was cognizant of being struck right before he died of catastrophic shock, the outpouring of blood more an afterthought than a cause of death. His body rested on its knees and slumped backward, back arched by the sheer weight of the blade.

Cloud Cosplay was now unarmed and squirming on the ground right next to Sevchenko, his right arm swollen and completely inert, tears streaming down his face. Lacking a weapon at hand, the Russian grabbed the laptop from the ground with both hands, then swung it savagely at Cloud Cosplay's head multiple times, cursing and screaming in desperate rage as he did so. The laptop's hard plastic structure and heft held it together. Cloud Cosplay's skull proved less resilient, the vicious blows grotesquely disfiguring and crushing both his head and his fancy hairdo. Sevchenko kept raining down blows even after the man had expired.

Zach saw that the crowd had thinned out and that there was a gap in the shooting. He thought to himself about how he never should've come in here in the first place, but at least no one had spotted him. He noticed a door nearby. It wasn't marked as an exit, but maybe it led to an exit. He bolted into the open right as Karen started trading fire with the last of the Russian goons. Mercifully, the door swung open and let him through, depositing him right in front of Old Guy, who had his pistol drawn and ready.

"Who the hell're you?"

"I-I-I'm with Uber! The one who drove Karen here. You know Karen, right?"

The old man was visibly disappointed by that.

"Aw, shit. Well, sorry kid, this just ain't your day. Werewolf or not, no witnesses allowed."

The old man took aim with his pistol so quickly and casually that Zach didn't even have time to piss himself. Despite what he'd just seen, staring down the barrel of that grandpa gun was by far the most terrifying thing he'd ever experienced.

Suddenly, the man lurched forward with an 'Oof!'. Zach hadn't noticed it before, but Old Guy was standing in front of an exit door. Someone had just opened the door and, as it swung forward, it struck the senior in the back. It wasn't a hard impact, but it was unexpected and threw him off balance, causing his aim to slew to the right.

The revolver went off with an enormous blast that belied its size, firing into a corner. The bullet ricocheted off one wall, then another, then a stack of cinderblocks, then zipped to its destination. Though slowed, disfigured, and wobbly, the bullet incredibly found a spot between the Old Guy's eyes, snapping through the bridge of his aviators and causing the two halves to tumble off his head. A trail of blood seeped from the entry wound. He reached a hand to the centimeter-wide perforation, contemplating the blood on his fingers for a moment.

"Huh. Well call me a rougarou."

His wide, steel blue eyes rolled into the back of his head and he crumbled to the ground, dead.

Zach turned to see who his savior was and found Boris standing in the doorway, about as surprised as Old Guy had been. After a few moments of blinking and registering so many absurd events in such a short span of time, he turned to Zach and was surprised again.

"Zach? I heard your voice and came back to look. What are you doing here? Chort, are you helping these people?"

"I have no idea what's even going on! There's werewolf hunters, there's Russian FSB, there's some psycho bitch named Karen... You're the one who needs to explain, not me!"

"I came here expecting to die to protect the people I love. Now that I'm alive, I'm not quite sure what to do next."

"Boris, ziomek, maybe think of something clever and Polish, like getting the hell out of here!"

The two spilled out of the building's exit, Zach struggling to keep pace with Boris even though Zach had been a runner all his life. Maybe it was just the adrenaline. They bolted toward the red GTI, which glowed like a beacon of deliverance in the otherwise empty parking lot.

Suddenly, Zach's back felt like it had been set ablaze and struck by a sledgehammer all at once. Catching him mid-stride, the impact lifted him off the ground before dumping him face-first onto the gravel. Something hot and red trickled down his back and he had trouble breathing.

He involuntarily curled up and turned to face what was behind, seeing Sevchenko running towards them, racking a new shell into a compact shotgun, pausing, aiming, and firing again. He heard Boris shout in pain. Zach turned and saw him also stumble to the ground, a puff of red mist trailing behind him. Incredibly, he got back to his feet, turning to face Sevchenko.

Sevchenko seemed perturbed by this as well, his weathered, jowly countenance widening as he racked in another shell and fired again, but he... missed? No, somehow Boris still had the agility to slip to the side and dodge it, but a few of the pellets still winged his left shoulder. Peppered in tiny wounds, Boris wiped a bit of blood from his chin, his body quaking. Zach couldn't quite believe that the man's fingernails had turned black, and that he was taking the time to bend down and pull off his shoes.

Sevchenko fumbled with the shotgun, then with his coat, evidently out of ammo. Boris, shoulders thrust wide, standing on tiptoes, every muscle in his body tensed, snarled with teeth that were smaller just moments ago and charged toward the FSB agent. Sevchenko, no stranger to the direct approach, flipped the shotgun around and ran toward Boris in kind, screaming and swinging the weapon like a baseball bat.

Just as the two closed the gap and started scuffling, Zach heard the huff and roar of a twin-turbocharged engine. The Suburban Assault Vehicle appeared out of nowhere, and it took a moment for Boris and Sevchenko to realize that they were directly between it and a massive concrete wall. There was no time for the vehicle to stop, no time to get out of the way.

The SUV smashed into the pair. Boris submerged under the vehicle and out of sight, but Sevchenko got pinned to the grill. As the vehicle struck the wall going 40mph, the heavy behemoth didn't just smash, it splashed. Sevchenko, positioned right at the point of impact, was instantly bisected and killed, his torso dangling and slouching over the hood as the wreck climbed a few feet up the wall. The armored windows at the front of the vehicle popped right off, and the shuddering, screeching engine twisted itself into an indecipherable knot even as it compressed into the wall, spraying oil and other fluids. At the end of its traverse, the elastic energy of the collision snapped back like a rubber band and bounced the car away from the wall a good two feet, revealing Sevchenko's lower half. The FJ Cruiser had never originally been designed to be this heavy, and so this modified version's driver safety couldn't be guaranteed in a head-on collision. The airbag dutifully went off, but as the nose of the vehicle crumpled upward it pushed the dashboard and steering wheel downward forcefully, crushing the pelvis and legs of anyone unlucky enough to be driving.

That someone had been Karen. Zach staggered to his feet, hunching over due to the searing pain in his back, then shuffled past the driver's side window. He couldn't tell if Karen could recognize him or if she was simply delirious. She did seem to recognize his presence, however, as he realized that her problems had been compounded because she wasn't wearing a seat belt.

"I want... to speak... to your manager..." She trailed off, then expired.

Zach had endured enough carnage for now, but he especially dreaded what he'd find when he sought out Boris' body. It was tough to breathe, tough to think straight. He stumbled across the front of the car, past the two halves of Sevchenko, towards the passenger side where Boris had been hit. He saw tufts of black hair, but no sign of his roommate.

Suddenly, the tufts of black hair moved. He realized they were connected to this continuous carpet of... fur? It was lodged between the engine and fender. Was this a perverse trophy that the werewolf hunters had kept? But it was still moving, and... something like a half-hand, half-paw appeared, as well as an articulate, very muscular arm. This form was pushing and straining, confined in the small place, fighting to get free.

"Boris?"

He hadn't seen it in the twisting, furry form, but a head with two pointed ears faced away from him. It turned as much as it could, revealing a massive wolf's face and muzzle in profile. It was covered in human skin. He was finally starting to decipher what he was looking at and the predicament he was in. It's just a shame that these were clearly the delusions of a dying man.

He didn't know why, but he decided to help. If werewolf Boris could reach his other hand around, he'd be able to force himself free, but a hunk of disfigured plastic was in the way and it looked like he could pull it loose. He squatted next to the wreckage of the air dam and sure enough, there was another hand struggling to find a way around, to find purchase. Zach pulled with all his dwindling strength and the large plastic panel, already weakened by the crash, came free. The sudden release threw him off balance and he fell to the ground as a growling, muscular beast shook and wriggled himself free. The last things Zach saw were the bright yellow eyes of a massive man-wolf looming over and regarding him as he slipped from consciousness.

*****

Interlude II:

Meeting of Pariahsoft & Hair of the Dog LLC Heads - Transcript of Dialogue

HARRY: So we're recording this? Call me a traditionalist, but isn't that a little dangerous?

SANJAR: This is an official business meeting, so yes, it is a little dangerous, but it is also necessary. We must have trust in each other, enough to see this through, and in my experience contracts and transcripts enable that trust.

HARRY: You know, Sanjar, all of this would be a lot easier if you joined us, got the full, authentic experience of things on our side. That would enable our trust way more than any documentation.

SANJAR: And as always, I appreciate the invitation, but it would seriously endanger my vegetarianism.

HARRY: Your principles didn't stop you from throwing one of your employees to us like a piece of meat.

SANJAR: That's a nice shirt. Do they make it for men?

HARRY: *Audible growling*

SANJAR: Calm down, Harry, you know I didn't mean it. The point I was going for was that before you do a character assassination on me, remember we were both part of that decision, and that decision wasn't easy. Boris is one of my best.

HARRY: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. He's made a lot of improvements to Neuri's load balancing and performance. Hell, he might've even saved my life. You don't want to know what horny werewolves are like when they can't send dick pics. Things can get a little dramatic.

SANJAR: I'm very relieved that Boris is adjusting so well, and you've been a big part of that. Why did you name the app Neuri, again?

HARRY: It's a reference to Herodotus. He wrote about a Scythian tribe called the Neuri, who reputedly transformed to wolves once a year. Plus, the name wasn't already trademarked like a thousand other wolf references. When did we start getting so popular?

SANJAR: That popularity is exactly what I am counting on! Your app is simple, but mature and has a lot of traction despite the distribution bottleneck. Making sure it's lean and robust was just the first step. Getting it into the hot little hands of eager users is next. We're right on the verge of releasing Canis. Oh, it's so exciting!

HARRY: Are we limiting the initial release to the U.S.?

SANJAR: Yes. The U.S. is a special case. Any other country and we might not get the critical mass of users we need. The United States has all the variables. It's spent almost all its growth on consumer spending. It continues agricultural policies that create huge surpluses of grain feed, which is used to cheaply feed millions of animals for slaughter. A combination of cheap, stable supplies of meat put America on a path to become the single best place in the world for werewolves, rakshasa, and other carnivorous werecreatures to live. These conditions have been in place since at least 1980 and may go all the way back to 1950. That's 70 years of being werewolf paradise, and still no one knows where the various communities are, how they shop, what they need, what they watch, what their consumption patterns are... This could be a marketing bonanza to rival the advent of the internet!

HARRY: That's what worries me. The marketing, the publicity. Can you promise me, 100 percent promise me that Canis won't be used to sell lists of user info to marketing companies? The last thing I want is for our enemies to steal a big list of all the names and addresses of every werewolf in America from some unsecure laptop and start hunting us down in the streets, and believe me, that will happen.

SANJAR: Harry, give me some credit. Canis is the culmination of a decade of sweat and toil, much of it my own. I didn't do it for some lofty principle or to help connect people together in one embrace. I did it for the money! Money I can't make from dead users. Money that I want to make for years and years, through licensing fees, glorious licensing fees!

HARRY: So where's that promise, Sanjar?

SANJAR: Harry, I promise you that Neuri's sensitive information will not be sold or used by Canis in any way that exposes end user information to the public. Canis is strictly a tool, a legal, easy to use app that will allow users to sideload Neuri onto their devices without our Google and Apple overlords knowing anything about it. Discretion is Canis' lifeblood, it's raison d'etre.

HARRY: Tell me how you plan to make money from us, then.

SANJAR: Canis will get your app in a lot more users' hands. Once a big enough ecosystem arises, a critical mass, Canis' algorithm will get a clearer picture of user habits on a large scale, the metadata. Ingested user data will be analyzed, then expunged daily. Then, and only then, will we start to use it as a marketing platform, using that high-level data for targeted advertising. We'll always provide preferential rates for advertisers hand-picked by you or your community managers. The high-level analysis by the Canis wrapper cannot target a specific individual's tastes, which means custom tailoring the individual user experience is your responsibility within the Neuri app. However, you will be free to make use of the metadata collated by Canis, and it is entirely up to you how to use that knowledge.

HARRY: You understand my dilemma. I'm not some kind of public figure for the lycanthrope community. I'm just a nightclub owner who got fed up with living in a world made for someone else. But if this goes to shit it's my name and my people that will go down, not yours. I can't overstate how peoples' lives depend on this. If the government gets a hold of the data and sees that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of us living among them, they'll have a whole new minority to persecute. It'd give internet hate groups and whackjob militias like KAREN carte blanche to track us, round us up, and shoot us.

SANJAR: Keeping people alive is my goal as well, Harry, and that also means making life worth living. Canis isn't just going to be a tool for werewolves. It's taking back the privacy and identity stolen from us by plutocrats and monopolists. Think of all the other outgroups who put their trust in the online community and had it violated and stolen, and told it was good and necessary. People want that privacy back! Why do you think I named my company Pariahsoft, cause I'm cozy with the Man? Plus, without some sort of community, how on Earth will lycanthropes ever get organized and effectively fight back when the literal shit hits the proverbial fan?

HARRY: If I go through with this and it blows up, I'm damned... but if I do nothing and the persecution happens anyway, I'm damned.

SANJAR: Harry, our destinies are tied. If Canis fails, Pariahsoft will be left in the mire of nameless throwaway apps, and I don't know if I have the strength to try again.

HARRY: Alright. I've made my decision. I approve of you using Canis to promote and distribute Neuri. I just hope the user base grows gradually so we have the time to work out the kinks.

SANJAR: Excellent! Superlative! We're putting the final touches on Canis for the various platforms and will release before the end of the month. Big changes are coming, my friend!

HARRY: Sanjar, you have my blessing, now stop selling me a carpet and get out of here!