Maren didn't move.
She stood with her back half-turned, arms folding across herself, staring at the screen, waiting for it to correct itself. The humming of the other monitors filled the silence where her voice should have been. Somewhere behind her, the apparatus on the bench kept bubbling through its slow, patient process, indifferent to whatever had just gone wrong on the other side of the room.
Ant watched her freeze in place and felt the old instinct rise before he'd decided to let it. Assess the room. Find the exit. Work out how fast he could move if this went somewhere he didn't want it to go. The door sat behind him, past the bench with its bubbling apparatus, eight steps, maybe fewer if nothing was in his way. He'd learned that lesson early and hard enough that his body stopped waiting for permission before it started planning.
She is thinking. No fear in it, Mahkir said, and there was nothing lazy in it, his ears were up, tracking Maren's every small movement with the same close attention he'd given the room on the way in. I would know the difference.
That strange urge to flee began to ease, more than he expected it to.
Maren turned back around before he'd finished the thought, though she said nothing yet. She crossed back to the terminal, fingers moving fast over the controls, and ran the scan a second time.
The same three words settled back onto the screen.
She moved to the terminal instead, checking the data at the source rather than through the lenses. Connectivity, first. Then the reader's own status. Then whether the chip itself was actually sending and receiving anything at all.
"Ruling out the reader," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Ruling out the connection."
Everything came back clean. Whatever was happening, it was clearly happening somewhere past her equipment.
She connected a second device, smaller, boxier, cabled rather than worn, something that read the chip's raw signal directly rather than going through the registry interface at all.
Same result. Every way she checked it, the answer never changed.
She stood there for a moment with her arms folded, working through it in silence before she finally spoke.
"I can think of three possible reasons," she said, and whatever had been confusion in her voice a moment ago had already sharpened into focus, a problem, out loud, being worked. "First. The chip's faulty. I've basically ruled that out now, it's clearly detecting something, since it's returning a specific result rather than nothing at all, and I've checked it three separate ways. A genuinely broken chip would manage far less than that."
"So that's ruled out."
"Ruled out." She held up a second finger without quite meaning to, the gesture of someone used to lecturing. "Second, wrong strain. The chip can't find the right branch of the registry to compare against. I'd give that maybe twenty percent. Even for something unusual, it should default to the nearest known category and work from there. It's built with that fallback specifically."
"So it should have guessed something. Even a wrong something."
"Exactly." She looked briefly pleased that he'd followed the logic without her spelling it out. "Which is why I doubt that's it either."
Ant said nothing about the fact that he had no better idea where Mahkir had actually come from than she did. That was a conversation for a day he was less tired and considerably less pinned to a medical table.
"And the third."
Her eyes lit before she said it, the careful concern from a moment ago giving way to open delight, barely held in check.
"The most likely explanation," she said, "is that this is a Kithren nobody's ever recorded. Nothing anywhere for the chip to measure him against. No baseline, no result." She caught herself almost as soon as she'd said it, the delight settling into quiet focus. "This is incredible, if I'm right. It's also potentially very dangerous, and I don't just mean for you. I have no idea what an unrecorded classification does to the rest of the system around it. I've never had reason to find out."
"Where would something like that even come from," she asked, quieter now, thinking out loud rather than actually expecting an answer. "A Kithren nobody's catalogued. No hybrid markers or flagged mutations anywhere I've seen. Just... new. Or old enough that the records that would've covered him don't exist anymore."
"I don't know," Ant said. Mostly true. What he knew stopped well short of what would have satisfied her.
She looked at him for a moment longer than the answer strictly required, her eyes narrowing slightly at the flatness of it, then let it go, set aside for later rather than dropped, he suspected. It told him something about how she operated that no amount of talking would have.
She waited, watching him, clearly expecting the news to hit harder than it had.
"So now what," Ant said.
Disappointment crossed her face, quick and honest, before she recovered and dropped into the nearest chair, unhurried now, done standing for this part of it. She reached into a small fridge built into the bench, cracked a can open, and took a thoughtful sip before continuing.
"Let's actually think the options through," she said. "One, we wait. Let the chip keep trying to build a baseline on its own, through observation. Downside is you keep reading as anomalous to anyone who checks closely. That tends to draw attention."
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Ant thought of the academy boys. Of Maren herself catching the anomaly within minutes of watching him fight. Attention was the last thing he wanted.
"How long would that take. Building a baseline on its own."
"Months, if it happens at all. Possibly never. I wouldn't recommend option one. I'm only including it because you deserve to hear all three, rather than just the one I like best."
"Two, we spoof it. Feed the chip a false classification, feline branch, given his build. You read as ordinary. Problem is the first time he uses a skill no cat-type has ever had on record, the mismatch becomes obvious. And the stats would be wrong regardless, calculated against the wrong starting point."
"And the third."
She paused longer on this one than the other two, her whole expression brightening in a way she didn't seem to be trying very hard to hide. "We run proper tests. Now. Find out what he can actually do instead of guessing by comparison, then log it under an existing classification, feline branch, same cover as option two, but built from real numbers instead of a guess. See what he can really do, properly and under control, and file it somewhere nobody looks twice."
The hope on her face was anything but subtle.
"So it still reads as ordinary," Ant said, "but the numbers behind it are real."
"Exactly that. Whoever glances at the registry sees whatever we end up calling it, feline branch, same as a hundred other entries. The stats and skills underneath won't come close to a normal one, but that only matters to someone who actually pulls the full profile and knows what the name's supposed to look like. A glance won't catch it."
"Who does that. Pulls the full profile."
"Anyone with proper clearance to query the registry. Which is more people than either of us would probably want, if I'm honest." She didn't dress it up, which he'd already come to expect from her. "I can push for the entry to log under Mahkir's classification without flagging your specific profile for review, that's a legitimate option in its own right, different from a workaround. It would still leave a trace of you. It would stop you from being the first result anyone sees."
"Do that."
"I intended to regardless." A faint, private satisfaction crossed her face, gone before it could become a smile. "It's still the most complete profile I'll ever get to build for something this unusual. That matters to me more than it probably should."
"If the numbers don't match the name, someone's going to notice eventually." Ant turned that over as he said it, watching how she took it. "Questions will follow."
"I know." She took the concern seriously rather than trying to talk him past it, which he appreciated more than a reassurance would have. "I can't make that question disappear entirely. I can control how much of it points back at you specifically, and I will. But the numbers, once they're logged, are logged. Someone thorough enough finds them eventually. Hopefully by then you'll feel strong enough, confident enough, that we can actually name him properly, enter a real new classification, something with my name on it as the researcher."
"You want to test him," Ant said, "or you want to see him fight."
"Is there a meaningful difference?"
"To you? Probably none."
That got the first real laugh out of her since they'd sat down, short, surprised, genuinely caught off guard.
"For what it's worth," she added, once the laugh had faded, "wanting to see it and needing to see it aren't mutually exclusive. I can want this and still mean everything I said about controlled conditions."
"I believe you."
"You don't have to. I'd still mean it either way."
She has been wanting to say that since the path, Mahkir observed, dry.
I noticed.
Everyone noticed.
He didn't want attention. Years of staying unnoticed had made sure of that. He'd rather be invisible again than be interesting in that way. The second option only swapped one problem for a different one, a mismatch waiting to be found the moment Mahkir did anything remotely dramatic, and given what he'd already seen, that felt like a matter of when rather than if.
"If we test him," Ant said, "what does that actually look like."
"Depends what we're testing for. Combat capability, mostly, since that's what's already visible and what the chip's struggling hardest to place. Controlled conditions. Nothing that puts either of you at real risk, I've no interest in getting my test subjects hurt." She said it plainly, the same directness he'd started expecting from her by now. "But it would mean you showing me things you might rather keep to yourself. Skills. Range. Whatever he's actually capable of, rather than what a chip guesses he might be."
"Against what, though, a person or a construct?"
"Constructs, to start. Calibrated opponents, difficulty adjustable, no actual risk to anyone standing in the room. If the readings come back inconclusive, we escalate, live opposition, monitored, always something either of us can call off the moment it stops looking safe. It won't be quick. An hour, at minimum, probably longer given how little baseline data we're starting from. Possibly the rest of the afternoon, depending what he turns out to be capable of."
"And you get all of that from watching him fight a construct."
"I get considerably more than a chip guessing from a photograph, which is essentially what it's doing right now." The corner of her mouth pulled. "I'll have real numbers to measure him against, set benchmarks for strength, speed, whatever we're testing that day. If he comes in stronger or faster than the benchmark, we calibrate higher and run it again, and again, until we land on a number that actually feels right instead of one we've just guessed at."
I have no objection, Mahkir said, before Ant had finished deciding how to feel about it. Let her see. I would like to know myself, honestly.
You don't already know what you can do?
I know what I have done. That is a different question.
Clever, Ant thought, more amused than he wanted to admit.
Ant looked at him for a moment, perched at the edge of the table, alert, entirely undaunted by the prospect of being put through whatever Maren had in mind. If Mahkir wasn't worried, that was worth something.
"Fine," he said. "Testing it is."
Maren's whole posture changed, the professional composure cracking just enough to let the actual excitement through. She was already on her feet, moving toward a cabinet on the far side of the room, pulling out a folded set of what looked like padded guards.
"We won't do it in here," she said, over her shoulder. "There's a proper space for this. Reinforced walls, monitored the whole way through, built for exactly this kind of thing. Give me a minute to get everything sent ahead."
Ant looked down at Mahkir, still perched at the edge of the table, tail flicking once, more anticipation than nerves.
Finally, Mahkir said. I was beginning to think this city only produced conversations.
Don't get used to it.
I intend to get very used to it.
You've been alive for a matter of days.
And already I have opinions. Progress.
That is a strange word for it.
Maren reappeared with an armful of equipment he didn't recognise, already talking through logistics half to herself, half to him.
"I'll need you both to come with me now, before either of us loses momentum on this," she said, checking something off against a mental list he couldn't see. "I do my best thinking mid-motion. Sitting still for too long after a decision usually means someone talks me out of it."
"Nobody's talking you out of anything."
"You'd be surprised. My father's very persuasive when he wants to be, and he doesn't even need to be in the room to manage it." She said it lightly, though the timing suggested it was only half a joke.
"So," Ant said, before she could get too far ahead of herself. "Where do we start?"