Yellow Jacket

Rain still drummed on the rooftops, but the worst of the storm had passed. The scent of ozone lingered, mingling with the burnt tang of scorched circuits and ruptured flesh. The Stitcher's remains sizzled in the wreckage, steam rising like ghost smoke from the crater it left behind.

They gathered around Warren.

He sat upright now, slumped against the interior wall of the entrance alcove. Water trickled through a crack in the ceiling and down his shoulder, but he didn't seem to notice. Wren crouched beside him, worry carved into the lines around her mouth. Florence was checking the readouts on a small diagnostic tool, her brow furrowed. Car stood at a slight distance, arms crossed, eyes never quite still.

"You good?" Car asked.

Warren's voice was quiet, strained. "I think so. Just... something hit me. Not physical. Deeper. Like something tore through my head and slipped out."

Florence looked up sharply. "Tore how? like vertigo?"

He shook his head. "Not like that. Like a hook. Sharp, but fast. No warning. It pulled something loose, then vanished. Left a gap."

Car shifted his stance. "You black out?"

"No. I was there the whole time. Just... wrong. Like something scraped through everything I was thinking. Not mine. Just pain. Like pressure behind my eyes that wouldn't stop."

Florence narrowed her eyes. "Could be daemonic influence. Signal exposure at close range might trigger neural bleed."

"It didn't feel like bleed," Warren muttered. "It just hurt. Not like anything I've felt before. It was pressure, like something too big trying to shove its way into a space that wasn't built for it."

Wren moved closer. "Did it feel like anything familiar? Something you've felt before?"

Warren hesitated, then shook his head. "No. Just pain. It didn't make sense. It felt like being cracked open from the inside, too much, all at once. Like my skull was trying to hold back something it wasn't meant to contain."

Car rubbed a hand along the strap of his weapon. "We've all heard strange signals before, but you went down hard. That was different."

"Yeah," Warren said. "It was."

Florence slowly powered down her scanner. "If it happens again, I want you to tell me the moment you feel it."

He nodded once. "I will."

But in his head, the sign still flickered. Bright. Brutal.

NOTICE: SYSTEM PROHIBITION.
Reuse of chips from previous hosts is strictly forbidden.
Mutation risk exceeds safe threshold.
100% fatality reported in test cases.
Full reformatting required. Do not bypass authentication failsafes.

The words looped behind his eyes, etched like heat scars.

He thought back to Reggie.

Warren hadn't paused. He had carved out the chip, wiped it clean, and slotted it into his own spine. No formal override. No system wipe. No reset.

Just control.

But control was only an illusion. The System had rules. And he had broken them.

Was he mutating? Or worse, had it already happened? Was he walking on borrowed time? Hollowed code stitched together with resolve and violence?

His breath caught. He scanned for signs, jerks, spasms, glitches. Nothing. Just stillness. But the hook was still there. Waiting.

Wren reached for his hand.

"You sure you're alright?"

He squeezed her fingers once. Not tight. But firm enough to make her stop asking.

"I'm fine," he said again. "Let's keep moving."

Car nodded and stepped aside, keeping pace with his eyes.

Florence lingered a moment longer before falling in behind.

But even as they stood, even as they walked deeper toward safety, Warren couldn't shake the feeling that something had touched him. Not with claws. Not with code. With intent.

No mercenary shadowed them. No Broken remained standing. Lucas hadn't followed. But something had.

Something older.

Something that had been waiting for him to open the wrong door.

And now that he had, it wasn't going to leave.

The pharmacy was quiet that night. Not empty, but still. They'd all agreed without saying that the road to Car's had to wait. Rain tapped against the reinforced windows like it had forgotten how to storm, and the soft hum of power from the waterwheel wrapped the shelter in a kind of hush.

Warren sat near the workbench, tools pushed to one side, the nano forge's glow banked low behind him. Styll paced in a lazy spiral at his feet, not restless, not bored. Just aware.

Florence crouched nearby, wrapping a thin, insulated line between her fingers.

"She trusts you," she said without preamble. "But that's not the same as bond integrity. Trust is emotional. Bond integrity is neural. Right now, you're still two separate minds, even if she follows your lead. You see her behavior. She reads your posture. But after this, if it works, you'll be able to see what she sees. You'll feel it. Smell what she smells. Flinch when she hears a threat you haven't noticed. You'll become overlap. That's bond integrity. Two signals braided close enough that reaction comes before thought."

Warren watched Styll turn, her fur brushed with heatlight. "How do I start it?"

Florence pointed to the base of Styll's skull. "Manual handshake. Just like the systems we used before the Green Zone started automating. Plug in. Focus. But you don't control her. You let her see you."

He nodded once. Then knelt, slow and deliberate.

Styll didn't flinch. She lifted her head, leaned forward slightly, like she'd been waiting.

The connector clicked into place.

Warren inhaled sharply. There was no flash, no noise, just pressure: like a ripple moving through glass.

Then it opened.

Not just sight. Not just thought. Texture. Breath. Depth. He wasn't in her mind, but he was beside it. Carried by it.

His balance shifted. Vision fractured and sharpened. He reached for the floor and realized it was instinct, not control. Styll had moved, and his body adjusted.

Florence spoke softly, almost reverently. "Don't try to steer. Let her show you what she sees."

Warren closed his eyes.

And saw.

Not as a dream. Not as a hallucination. As a layer: tactile, fluid, present. The room rebuilt itself from her senses: airflow through narrow gaps, magnetic interference from the tool rack, traces of someone's boots left in the floor's dust. Every shift had meaning. Every detail was weight.

She climbed the rafters. Moved like silence had rules only she knew. She swept her gaze across every corner: soft piles of rags, Warren's cluttered workbench, Wren's clinic light blinking quietly beneath its cover. Each surface held heat differently, tasted different in the scent-map she fed him.

When she turned her head toward the bench corner near the heat coils, her nest, Warren almost recoiled.

It was that scent.

The one he hated.

Old fabric, salvaged insulation, something faintly chemical and sweet. He'd scrubbed that blanket three times. Still couldn't get rid of it.

But now?

Through her nose, it was a universe. The heat coils gave off a rhythm that pulsed like breath, soft and predictable, grounding. The fibers of the blanket carried trace particles of their travels, burnt ozone from District Four, stone dust from the Red Zone, the oil-rich grime of busted fuse boxes Warren had cracked open months ago. All of it settled in the weave, not as filth, but as story. And beneath that, the deeper textures: the scent of metal rubbed warm from handling, the ghost of Wren's antiseptic packs that had once sat too close, and something uniquely Warren, sun-wet fabric, bitter sweat, and the unburned tang of oil he used to clean his truncheon.

To Styll, it was all foundation. Memory baked into cloth. Every scent had direction. Every fold mapped warmth.

She pushed her face into the blanket, and Warren felt the surge: security, not laziness. Familiarity. The human word for it was nest, but that didn't cover it. This wasn't comfort the way people meant it. It was rightness. A known space in a shifting world. Safe.

The warmth of the coils was perfect. Not too hot, not sharp like exposed pipe. Just the steady push of life temperature, filtered through old cloth and fur. The insulation had a faint metallic sourness that would've made Warren gag, except now it made his shoulders lower. His jaw unlocked. The air felt thicker, but in a good way. Held. Weighted like a blanket on a cold day.

Every thread was a thread she had chosen. The torn seam from an old synth glove. A corner frayed by her teeth. A loop of wire she'd dragged there and curled into for a week before Warren found it and threw it out. She'd gone and brought it back again.

Warren saw it all in fractal bursts: short, sharp flashes of memory encoded in smell. The way she circled the blanket before settling. The flick of her ear every time the generator shifted rhythm. Her body logging every microshake in the pharmacy like it was a song only she could hear.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The floor beneath the blanket had flex. Subtle. Enough to give. The coils made a soft tapping as they cooled. To her, those sounds were lullabies.

He felt her awareness stretch like a muscle across the pharmacy, then fold back into this one perfect corner. Her tail curled over her nose. Her claws kneaded once into the fabric. Then she purred, not audibly, but through the link. A signal of saturation. Of enough.

And Warren, who had always hated that smell, who had threatened to burn the damn blanket more than once, felt it hit him like shelter.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

It was disarming. Violent, in its gentleness. The way it folded around him through Styll's memory made him feel like a trespasser in his own home, like the space had always belonged more to her than to him. He realized, then, that he'd built this place to survive. She had turned it into something survivable. And that was different.

The smell had always annoyed him because it lingered. Now he understood: it lingered because she made it stay. Because she'd marked this corner not just with instinct, but with choice. Not because it was convenient, but because it meant something.

He felt her heartbeat slow. Not with sleep. With peace. And it mirrored his own until the line between them blurred.

What he'd built for function, she had claimed for comfort. What he'd dismissed as clutter, she remembered as history. What he'd hated in scent, she had called home.

And now he did too.

Styll curled once around the coils, just to let him feel it.

Then she returned.

He felt her coming before he saw it.

She leapt to his lap. Sat. Waited.

Florence nodded. "Link's there. The more time you give it, the sharper it'll get. It's not a weapon. It's a second body. Treat it like one."

Warren ran a hand down Styll's back. The connection shimmered, real, but quiet.

"I see it," he said.

Florence stood. "Good. Then she'll keep you alive a little longer."

Styll chirped once. Then curled into his coat.

The light dimmed. The rain kept falling.

They didn't need to speak.

Their bond held strong.

The sound inside the pharmacy that morning was pure chaos, at least if you were trying to sleep.

Wren snored like a malfunctioning turbine. It started with a deep inhale, then rose to a snorting crescendo that echoed off the steel supports like a warhorn. It was the kind of sound that made you question if lungs were supposed to make that shape.

Car's snore wasn't as loud, but it was weirder. It came in uneven puffs, like an old steam vent trying to stay polite. Every so often, he muttered something under his breath, nonsense words, old fight calls, maybe poetry, no one could tell, and the cats piled on top of him barely twitched. At least five of them had claimed him. Warren didn't remember when the fifth one arrived, but it had slinked in and never left. The others accepted it like it had always belonged, curling around it like it had always been there. Even the surliest tom Warren had ever seen was now curled on Car's ribs like a king on a throne.

Styll snored too, high-pitched and tiny. It was barely more than a whistle, but somehow it was the loudest of them all, because it was so cute.

Florence and Warren were both wide awake. Covered in dust. And rebuilding a wall.

They'd torn out the collapsed west section completely. Propped up a scaffold to keep the roof from sagging. Now Florence was crouched with a stabilizer bracket, and Warren was driving anchors into place with rhythmic thuds.

"This is a good thing you're building here," Florence said, not looking up.

Warren answered without pausing. "It's for her."

"Wren?" Florence asked, even though she already knew.

"The monster," he confirmed. There was no bite in the words. Only truth.

Florence laughed. "I'm surprised you need an alarm with snoring like that."

Warren smirked. "I wouldn't if Styll didn't sound so damn cute."

Florence half-choked on a laugh, snorting loud enough to echo off the scaffolding.

They worked a moment in companionable rhythm.

"Does he know the cats sleep on him?" Warren asked, eyes on a level.

"Even Bastard found a spot," Florence said.

Warren grinned. "That's funny. He's a cat magnet, but only when he's asleep."

Florence brushed concrete dust from her sleeve. "You know they followed him home, right? All of them. They like me, but they secretly love him."

Warren nodded solemnly. "That's cats for you. Mysterious for no real reason."

Florence chuckled. "Animals seem to like you too."

Warren's hammer paused. "I'm not sure if they should."

As if on cue, Styll stirred. Sleepy-eyed, she stumbled from her curled ball on a crate, tripping slightly as she made her way to Warren. She bumped his foot and then climbed him like he was a warm tree.

The moment hit fast.

Warren blinked, caught off guard by the surge through the bond. It wasn't sight or smell, it was feeling. Love. Pure and immediate. A quiet knowing that she was his and he was hers. He swayed slightly, vertigo threading the space between their shared awareness. For one breath, he was in both bodies.

Florence didn't even glance up. "You get used to it. You only have one, I got three. And that's not even counting the bots back at the factory."

Warren steadied himself. "Wait, you're bonded to all three of them? How do you keep up?"

Florence stood and stretched. "My Skill helps. It filters things. Keeps only the important stuff in focus. Like instinct triage."

She shrugged. "I don't recommend it for most people. One bond is already a lot. Two is dangerous. I make it work, because my Skill breaks the rules."

Warren scratched Styll behind the ear. She melted.

A pleasant echo flooded through him like warm static.

"That could be addicting," he murmured.

Florence smiled. "It becomes second nature. She'll just become a part of you. Still separate. Still herself. But one."

Styll blinked once. Then nestled against his chest.

And Warren believed her.

Warren didn't know how it had happened. One moment he was standing at the edge of the kitchen counter, trying to unseal a stubborn tin of condensed milk. The next, he had five cats in his arms.

All of them.

Sprawled. Draped. Balanced across his forearms and shoulders like sleepy, judgmental scarves.

He stood frozen, arms slightly extended, back straight, eyes wide with something between awe and tactical regret.

Car walked in, stopped mid-step, and just stared.

Then, slowly, he started to weep.

"Why," he whispered. "Why him? He doesn't even like cats."

Warren adjusted his grip on one particularly chonky tabby. "I like cats. I just... this is too many. I need help."

Car moved forward like a pilgrim approaching a holy relic. "Let me just..."

He reached out gently, palm up, reverent.

The cats exploded.

All five shot off in different directions like they'd been launched from tiny cannons. One leapt onto the counter, another scrambled under the chair. The chonky one made a noise like a tired accordion as it belly-flopped to safety.

Wren broke.

She clutched the doorway, laughing so hard she couldn't breathe. Florence was doubled over behind the table, gasping between wheezes.

Car stood in the middle of the room, arms still outstretched, devastated.

"They... they were all there," he said numbly.

Warren shrugged and gave his shoulder a sympathetic pat. "Do you want to hold Styll? She likes you."

Styll, perched on the windowsill, slowly turned her head.

She blinked. Once. Then hopped down with dainty precision and walked off, tail high.

A clear message.

Car just slumped to the floor not saying a word.

Wren was on the floor now, laughing with no sound coming out.

Florence managed to gasp, "You broke him."

Warren just nodded. "Yeah. But the cats started it."

The group moved out just after dawn. The rain had softened to a steady mist, and the pharmacy stood quiet behind them, stable, secure, and oddly warm with the smell of metal, dust, and dry power coils still lingering.

Warren locked the door behind them, the heavy bolt sliding into place with a deliberate finality. His fingers lingered on the latch a second longer than needed. This wasn't just shelter. It was home. Their base. And no matter where they went, this place would wait.

Warren led at point. Wren trailed just behind him, hood up, stick tapping lightly in her left hand. Car and Florence brought up the rear.

Four cats followed.

Only four.

The chonky one had vanished sometime after the incident, possibly in search of a the forgotten tin or a warm patch of roof. Car had searched briefly, but the general consensus had been: he'll come back if he wants to.

Bastard was still with them. He trotted ahead like he'd always been part of the party, tail high, stopping only to swipe at puddles with a look of contempt usually reserved for the living.

"I swear he's scouting for us," Wren muttered.

Warren grunted. "Wouldn't be the weirdest thing we've seen."

Car glanced at Warren, eyebrows knitting as he realized two cats were lounging on his backpack and a third was somehow nestled inside his hood. Warren walked like it was nothing, a slow-moving shrine to feline attachment.

"Still mad about the stampede," he said under his breath.

Florence snorted. "You'll earn your forgiveness, one nap at a time."

The road ahead twisted through broken concrete and wildgrown lots, but the air felt lighter than it had on the way back to the pharmacy. No emergency. No rush.

Just the path back to the Bazaar.

And whatever waited beyond it.

Bastard hissed.

It wasn't the lazy, performative kind of hiss he used when car passed too close or a bug crawled over his paw. This was sharp. Instinctive. His tail flared, ears pinned flat, every muscle gone tight.

The other cats paused, then began to pace in jagged lines. Their movements weren't frantic, but deliberate. Alert. Like their tiny world had just shifted sideways.

Styll went stiff beneath Warren's coat. She slipped free a heartbeat later, landing with barely a sound. Her paws hit the ground like she already knew where she needed to be.

She circled once, then twice. Then made her way to Warren and stopped at his feet.

Florence had crouched down, her own bonds pacing back and forth. Her eyes widened as she tuned in.

And then it hit them.

Warren staggered slightly, hand catching the edge of a rusted post.

Florence swore, low. "Do you smell that?"

"Smoke," Warren said.

It wasn't visible yet. Not to their eyes. But through Styll's sense-map, it curled along the edge of the wind. Bitter. Dense. Not cook fire smoke, chemical. Something synthetic.

Wren stepped forward, brow furrowed. "What is it?"

"Not a campfire," Florence said, already rising. "It's wrong."

Warren turned toward the wind. He closed his eyes. Through Styll, it was clearer. A lacing thread of danger, winding back along the ridgeline toward the outer path of the Bazaar.

He opened his eyes.

"They're burning something," he said. "Something big."

Car's eyes went wide. He stepped forward, voice sharp with alarm.

"The Bazaar!"

They ran.

They ran flat out, as if lives depended on it, because they might. No pacing, no measured breath, just raw velocity hammered into every stride. Feet hit stone and ruin with reckless precision, fueled by urgency and dread. The mist thickened as they drew closer, and with it came the first hints of smoke still hanging in the damp air. Not fresh. But recent.

The Bazaar loomed ahead. The massive outer wall rose from the earth like old armor, soot-streaked and still smoldering in places. The fires had burned down, but not long ago. Ash clung to the edges of the main path. The scent of melted plastic and burnt resin twisted through the haze.

A crowd had formed outside the gates. Scavs, traders, medics, runners. Tired eyes. Dirty faces. More than a few people with bandages wrapped quick and rough. At the center of it all stood Grix, her voice cutting through the noise like a command bell.

"Get the outer crates cleared! Nobody touches the vents! I said hold the south line, not redeploy it!"

Warren arrived first, coat streaked with soot, his boots slick with rain and grime. He didn't hesitate.

Car and Florence pounded up the road just seconds behind him, lungs burning but legs still moving. Wren wasn't far off, stick clutched tight in her hand, her breath ragged but steady as she forced herself to keep up.

"Grix," Car said, urgent but clear. "What happened?"

Grix didn't stop barking orders as she answered. "Some moron thought the biofuel was lamp oil. Lit it. It burst, and you know how that stuff burns even in the rain."

One of the guards stepped forward, face pale. "I swear I filled that lamp the same way I do every night."

"No excuses," Grix snapped.

"Wait," Warren said, stepping closer. "I want to hear this."

Grix looked at him, her expression taut. When she saw it was Warren, some of the sharpness drained from her face. She gave a curt nod, then turned back to the guard.

"Go on."

The guard swallowed. "Me and Jonas fill the lamps every night with oil from the blue canister. We never touch the red one, that's Yeri's job. We would never put that stuff in a lamp. That's just asking for trouble."

Wren glanced at the scorched siding near the gate. "If you didn't do it... who did?"

Warren and Car both said it at the same time.

"Lucas."

They looked at each other. Nodded.

Car grimaced. "He's gonna claim some bullshit about incompetent management. Then use this to stir the crowd and try to take the Bazaar."

Grix laughed, loud and low. "Like that'd ever work. They keep forgetting the rules here. Might makes right, and we've got a whole lot of might on our side."

Florence crossed her arms, scanning the gate. "I don't think Lucas, or whoever actually did this, expected you to be here, Grixalia. They probably thought it was going to be a shitshow."

A new voice cut through the settling tension, smooth and theatrical.

"Now now, let's not throw around wild accusations. That's not very civil."

The crowd shifted.

Lucas stepped through the edge of the smoke, flanked by two of his enforcers. His coat was clean, too clean, and his smile looked like it had been practiced in a mirror.

Grix's stance tightened. Florence's eyes narrowed. Car didn't reach for his weapon, but his hand dropped noticeably closer.

Lucas stopped a few paces from the group, hands raised in mock surrender.

"Just came to check on everyone. Awful tragedy. Poor handling of hazardous materials, I assume? Surely nothing malicious."

Warren said nothing. But the look in his eyes said plenty.

Lucas smiled wider.

"Of course, we all want what's best for the Bazaar. Wouldn't want people thinking it's time for new leadership just because of a little fire."

And with that, the mood shifted again. The fire was out, but the game had just started.