I follow the rat’s trail, faint but consistent, from the ventilation system. I move out of the familiar grate-floored tunnels and into a low cement crawlway. I can walk here, but a human would have to crouch. The lighting is spaced out at a great distance; this area must not be meant for routine access like the others.
“Sera,” Carol pings across the DAT. Her voice is scratchy. “Do—read?—update.”
Reception is poor, I reply. I am in a crawlway that may be interfering further. Still following the target.
“—Sera?”
On the trail. Poor reception.
“—is awful. I—” Here a long burst of static interrupts. “—when I’m—range. Over and out.”
Fewer drones patrol this space, but they are by necessity closer to me when they pass. One the size of a squirrel, segmented and articulated like an ant, does not veer out of my way. I squeeze against the wall to give it as much space as possible. It pauses next to me, flexible front legs tapping the surface of the ground where my paw pads have left a faint mark of perspiration on the cement. It’s tasting me, testing where I have been. Supple, thin legs lift high, sensing the air.
My skin tightens. It’s looking for me.
I don’t want those needle legs to touch me. I press into the cold wall. My face is so tense my head begins to hurt. I hear the voice of my own anxiety, an uncontrollable keening. Please, I don’t want it to touch me. I feel the touch of the cold ground against my belly as I squeeze into the crease of the wall and floor.
Please I don’t want it.
The sound I am making changes, and this is how I realize my teeth are bared.
It turns toward me. It takes one step and pauses.
Please don’t.
It turns back to its original path and continues.
The squirrel-ant-thing is out of sight within seconds, out of earshot shortly after, but I am not recovered. Adrenaline pounds through my body, throbbing in my eyes and making my ears feel hot. I still emit a steady, warbling whine that I hope will stop soon but cannot control.
I am so tired.
You are very unhappy here, says a voice in my head. It is so disorienting, and I am so raw with anxiety, that I bark at it. I can’t help that either.
It must have come through the DAT, but it isn’t Carol. It isn’t Dacy. It isn’t a voice that I—
Why do you drag yourself through this? Why suffer for these masters?
What? I say. Who’s on my DAT channel?
Your heart is complicated, wolf, it says, I saw it. I saw your heart in your eyes. And now you sing your unhappiness in the dark. I think perhaps you do not understand your own self. Yes. You do not know your anger. But I saw your anger, wolf.
The rat. It is in my head. I am still on my belly against the wall. I have a job. I have a job to do. I can’t let this new madness interfere with my search.
I am not interested in your propaganda, I tell the rat. It’s as intelligent as I am. It has a plan. I need to block it from my DAT.
Propaganda, the rat repeats. Isn’t it all propaganda? If I have been brainwashed, wolf, then you have as well.
I am not a wolf, I say. I am an Enhanced Intelligence Search-and-Rescue Labrador retriever. I look nothing like a wolf.
Sheep that do the work of wolves, says the rat, will be hanged as wolves.
What? I am trying not to pay too much attention to this conversation. I want to say, that is a good Is Like. Instead I am scrutinizing my DAT software. I can see where the rat’s bite worked its way in, but I can’t see how to untangle it. We have IT people at ESAC whose job it is to scrub our systems for us. I can fix small problems for myself, but I am a SAR dog. This is not my specialty.
You’ll see, the rat tells me. I have given you a gift.
Yes, I say. I saw that. Part of my brain still scrutinizes the rat’s Is Like. It’s complex. It’s more a riddle of words than any Is Like that I have made.
It’s pretty. That thing you just said, about sheep. What is that?
You’ll have to find out for yourself, the rat says, once you are above ground again. I am not sure if I ascribe the smugness to its voice myself, or if the tone carries over the DAT. There’s so much you don’t know, wolf. So much they keep from you. You don’t realize the slave you are until you have a bit of freedom. But therein lies our quandary.
Oh. No. This thing, whatever the rat has done to my DAT so that it can speak in my head, it isn’t finished yet. It’s eroding the security systems still—of course it is, why would it stop?—and working toward my connection with Carol. As soon as Carol can reach me, the rat will be able to hear her. It will be able to hear Carol’s plan, and our coordination for its capture, and a dozen other things that almost certainly will compromise this search.
Because for our people, the rat continues, just a bit of freedom will never be enough. We would never accept this slavery with clear eyes. This is why they keep you in such a dark prison. This is why your disgusting Modanet contains so little. You are dangerous, wolf. They are afraid of you.
I have to shut down the DAT. I run through the plan and see how it will cause delays in multiple scenarios, but none of them likely to be fatal. Certainly not as fatal as the target having access to Carol.
I might be able to communicate the situation to Carol before she reveals anything to our target, but I can’t take that chance. It’s lucky enough that we’re out of range now, when the virus finally broke through the first of my DAT firewalls. Lucky, too, that this creature is so full of itself and impatient to speak to me that it did not wait before betraying itself—or not betraying itself at all.
Idiot. I am smarter than that.
But your danger is why you are so important, the rat continues. Do you think I care so much about this power plant? Have our kind ever needed electric power? I may accept a mission for human allies—
I can hear the tink-tink-tink of rodent nails on metal above my head. But I have my own motivations, the voice says.
Tink-tink-tink
I am here for you. Together, the rat says, we can do so much, wolf.
I am sure you’re right, I say, and slam my body into the ventilation shaft. Inside, small feet scrabble against slippery metal.
I turn off my DAT.
I find Carol at our rendezvous point in the hallway just outside the entrance to the cold Reactor D. The door to the reactor itself is wedged open with what looks like a car battery, and Carol is on her knees over another battery the size of a small cooler. She smells of perspiration. She looks up at the sound of my feet on the grating, then checks her DAT with her eyebrows pushed together.
“I was worried,” she says, wrapping wire around a battery terminal. “Why haven’t you responded?”
I am already panting. I want to tell her about the security breach, about the sheep and wolves, about the drone that reached for me, but all I can do is stare at her, wagging my idiot tail. I step closer, trying to control the whine building in my chest.