Rat
Slightly greater density of time-sodden molecules wafting back along the edge of the grating gathered like tufts of shed hair at the edges of
Along the access tunnel and the trail grows dimmer and dimmer, but I am sure this is the right tunnel, the arrow was large and heavy, I work the air hard, I am sure this is the
“Sera,” Carol says, but I am hunting the air, and I don’t acknowledge so she says again, “Sera.”
Another thirty feet down the tunnel and still no scent, but I am sure it will be here somewhere, it will be here, the path was so clear
“Let’s check the other turnoffs. We can come back if they’re dry. Sera.”
She actually takes the handle on my harness, and at first I stiffen and resist, which I have never done. Carol has never pulled me off a trail. I am confused why she would not trust my nose when I am the search dog and she is the handler, and I am the one who says where the trail goes, and she is the one who interprets. My heart starts beating hard. I walk with her, but it is hard not to pull back to where I was.
We enter the center tunnel, to the right of the path I was on. Fifteen feet in I pick up the rat.
Carol was right.
Interest, I ping and hurry down the track.
“Yes,” Carol says, following behind me.
Minutes later the trail fades again, lost somehow in the backdraft of time and movement, or perhaps hidden by a clever track-layer. Are bodydrones smart in that way? I suppose they are as smart as whoever is running the drone.
I backtrack and pad down a turnoff, but it is a dead end. I work the trail’s end, attempting to find the lost thread.
A drone skims my head. I flinch and press my belly to the floor.
“Shit,” Carol says. “Their proximity settings must be disabled. That thing nearly got you.”
I had forgotten the drones while I worked. I pant. The trail is gone, lost somewhere in this narrow hallway. The grating under my paws vibrates with this place’s pervasive rumble. I wish that endless sound drowned out some of the drone-sounds, but I can hear them.
I catch myself whining again.
I move before Carol feels the need to comfort me. I do not want her new sympathy for me to turn into pity.
We continue down the tunnel, passing additional junctions. I make cursory checks of the intersecting tunnels. Time moves strangely. I know from the schematics I was given that we are nearing Reactor C. I have lost the trail. I am not doing the best job possible. I need to find a way to make Carol connect with me. I don’t want to retire. I want to do SAR, like I was trained at ESAC. Beetle-sized drones swarm at points on the walls and, as we approach, scatter like my thoughts.
Carol’s radio makes a sound. “Ah,” she says. “Anders? Do you copy?” There is radio voice that I can’t discern. Carol reads our exact location off her screen. “Sera had something, but lost it,” she says. “Copy. We’ve had the same experience. Thanks.” She speaks to me. “Array security are herding some drones out of the C-through-E corridors for us.” She turns her attention back to the radio. I scan down the hallway, watching beetle-drones scuttle into the cracks between the floor grating and the wall. There is a scent of the faintest memory of electrical fire, a wire short far off. It’s out of place. I turn my nose toward it.
The ground’s vibration builds suddenly and then it is a bellow, the tunnel shaking with it. Lights judder in their fixtures and down the hallway the last of the little drones chatters across the floor, legless in the tumult. My vision dances. Carol ducks and crouches toward me, looking up. The temperature in the passageway shoots up twenty degrees, hot suddenly where it had been only warm. It is muggy, thick, and humid. The grating beneath us rattles in its housing.
“It’s Reactor C,” Carol shouts. “Shit, we lost it.”
I can think of no other explanation than the reactor venting through its emergency shutdown, a procedure that I now fully comprehend from the dossier transfer. I confirm this against details that I seem to have always known, though they would have meant nothing to me this morning. A consequence of storing information in biological memory.
The roar and rattle continue for minutes, though such drama seems like it should be short-lived. Carol squats next to me, still looking up and down the empty tunnel. The violence of sound paralyzes us. The vent fans overhead run at extreme speed. It is like we are in the throat of some enormous howling beast that never runs out of breath.
After interminable seconds, the shaking subsides and then fades. The quiet is unnerving. I think about the Is Like I made just moments ago, without intending to.
The Array now has three reactors down. It is 50 percent off-line. One more reactor to critical failure.
Carol taps her radio. “Dammit,” she mutters.
We are not far from Reactor C. I remember the whiff of electrical fire. Target nearby, I tell her.
I go back to work.
I have never been asked to apprehend a target before. Search-and-rescue dogs find victims, mark locations, bring their handlers to the lost thing. Some avalanche dogs might dig a victim out from an embankment of snow. But we do not drag people out of danger physically—I weigh sixty-five pounds, it would not be effective—and we don’t apprehend criminals. SAR dogs use our noses to find what is missing, a subtler art than brute force.
But even though it is not something I am trained for, I am an EI dog. I am adaptable. And I have been asked to do this.
So when I almost stumble over my target ducking into a narrow crevasse between two small ducts that run along the tunnel from Reactor C’s outer control room, my speed in responding surprises me. I know exactly what to do. It isn’t the EI part of me; it is something deeper.
My body is hurry and heat. Adrenaline turns my joints to liquid fury. I hear a low snarl from my throat—not an angry sound, but eager, greedy. My front feet are extended, midair, head low, gaze locked on the thing that has only just noticed me. It is frozen in panic, then it’s not. I land in a clanging crash against the wall and grating as it skitters out from between my paws.
Carol shouts wordlessly behind me—or maybe there are words and I am too busy to make them out—but I gather my haunches beneath me and leap again. My olfactory lobe rings Rat Rat Rat and my blood simmers with something I can’t identify and part of me loathes. I am close to my quarry, inches, my neck and shoulders low to the ground and feet tucking up tight as I run. My teeth snick the air once, closing around an airy mouthful of Rat, but sink into nothing.
To bite. I want to bite it, like Mack and his stupid Kong. I am acting like an animal. I can hear it breathe, shallow quick panicked.
My target slips around a corner I didn’t even notice was there. My observational powers are shut down to a focus so narrow I am almost blind. I make a less elegant turn than my target’s, my mass carrying me wider and giving the bodydrone a chance to add distance. Boots clang behind me, Carol disadvantaged by her two legs.
Ahead there is a low nook, a crawlway for pipes and wiring. The rat drone dives into this space. I am just barely the size to fit, kicking and pushing until I am wedged in. My tail thrashes in the open passageway, trying to help me leverage my way in by canting my spine. I am fatally slowed in our chase.
But so is the drone: there is no way out. Or, not true entirely, because before I came in and blocked the light, I saw a small shaft running along the back. Probably part of the HVAC system. I also observed a joint in the shaft that was not properly sealed, a narrow crack allowing air to escape into the crawlway. I feel the breeze of it against my whiskers. This is where the bodydrone tries to squeeze itself now. It fights its way in, then backs out, squeezes in again, back end thrashing in the air. Stuck almost exactly the same way I am.