The Kitty Thing

Specter doesn’t particularly like stakeouts.

He isn’t a restless man, but something about sitting idle for hours on end, just waiting and observing, not even knowing how long he’d really have to keep a lookout — it’s simply not his idea of a good time. He prefers silence to come with a purpose.

However, he would have to admit that there had been worse things he’d have to do on the job. So tonight he sits still in the cold of an unfamiliar hovercar in the dark but crowded parking lot, in a city on a far-off planet that feels like home in Aster-1A, just with different street and place names. He keeps his eyes trained on the busy, neon-illuminated nightclub across the street.

He idly wonders if he should have brought a book, but then that would beat the point of the whole thing. He is supposed to be keeping watch, waiting for his contact.

It’s been three hours.

His left eye has started to sting from the constant harsh glow of the neon. His right eye, of course, barely feels like anything, the dull cold of the cybernetic implant being the only sensation he feels in his socket.

He leans back to glance at the screen that shows the hovercar’s rear view. There’s a couple tangled up in each other on the hood of the car behind his. He does remember them passing by him earlier – a woman in a sparkly, tiny dress giggling as a giddy man that looks twice her age pulled her along. His gaze travels to the vehicle beside his then, thankfully a parked hoverbike with no one in it. The van to his other side, however… Well. Specter has just been trying his best to ignore the shaking of the vehicle that began roughly half an hour earlier, right after he observed a group of three get in from the back.

Specter isn’t fazed. He had expected this. Unfortunately, this is not a new scene for him to be staking out in. It’s why it’s a good spot, anyway, because it’s the place people go to come to or from the neon-lit clubs across the street, and everyone minds their own business.

Unbothered by his surroundings as he is, he’d still really like it if his contact would finally show up.

He is bored. He almost wishes he let Kitty tag along. Kitty had asked if he could go, and with those big bright golden cat eyes and twitching ears, Specter had almost caved and said yes.

But Specter knew this one job isn’t as simple as it seems. It’s not their usual harmless pickup or delivery – Kitty specially likes those ones, he likes getting to go places. Specter would have even considered bringing Kitty along if this was an escort job – Kitty is good with people – but it isn’t.

It’s close, though.

When Specter got this offer, it was listed as “multiple asset retrieval”. Two assets. Two people – alive. It was a job he’d normally opt to pass up on, but it was sent to him by a man he owed more than a couple of favors to, who insisted that Specter was the right freelancer for the job.

The first asset is an informant – someone who’s been “on the inside” for some time, now due for an extraction. That’s the first part of the job – get the informant, and this person would provide the information they have on the second asset. Specter really would have preferred to just get data over comms, but this is fine. Not optimal, but routine enough.

The second asset is a “liability”. Specter could only guess what that means, to be a liability to the man who personally hired him for the job.

His client, Cabot, is as shady as they come. No one with pockets that deep and a net that wide could be truly clean, Specter knows. He usually avoids those types – the ones who are too rich, too influential, with names that appear on big glowing letters on the side of several tall buildings. But he’d owed Cabot some favors in the past, so the best Specter could do was set a boundary the first time he agreed to work for the man – “No killing jobs for me, I’m done with those.”

So far, that’s been honored.

Specter just hopes that this is not the day that Old Man Cabot just willy-nilly decide to fuck him over. But you never know, so Specter stands firm on his decision to leave Kitty behind, safe home on Aster-1A, the first and biggest moon of planet Aster’s sector.

Specter’s eyes – one cold and unfeeling, one tired and stinging – go back to observe the crowds and the people heading in and out the loud nightclub, walking off in different directions, most of them stumbling and laughing.

He checks his messages, and realizes he missed an important one from about an hour ago.

Ah. That is… That’s… fine. Kitty is free to do what he wants, hang out with who he wants to hang out with while Specter is off stuck in a clunky and cold hovercar and practically almost blinding his one remaining eye-

No. Nope, he will not go there.

Specter checks the time, and goes back to watch duty.

He really doesn’t like stakeouts.

Specter isn’t sure how much more time passes. Mostly, he’s just relieved that the van to the side of his hovercar has stopped shaking.

He doesn’t miss the lone unmistakeably feminine figure that comes stumbling out the brothel then – another woman in the tightest of dresses and very high heels, giggling and greeting passersby on her way as she crosses the street. Her long, wild, bright green hair is almost its own source of light, reflecting the neon of the club. It leaves Specter barely able to make out her actual features from where he’s watching.

His window is the third one she taps on – and it’s only now that he can look at her up close, that Specter finally sees her face.

He rolls his windows down, and stares for a second, just to be sure.

Her hair is definitely a wig, her eyes are a very unnatural color, and Specter knows this is very much not how she likes to wear her makeup, but it’s definitely her.

“Oh.” is what she says when she sees him, and it takes her another second to lean down and get back in character. Purple lips pull into a grin. “Looking for a friend, sir?”

“Huh.” is the first thing Specter manages. He shakes his head as he musters up the reply he was instructed to give her. “It’s a good night for company.”

She lets out a breathy chuckle, almost as if she couldn’t believe the words out of his mouth. “Shit, really? They sent you?”

Specter rolls his eyes as he reaches over to flip one of the switches in the dashboard. “Just get in.” he says, before rolling his window back up.

His eyes follow her as she walks around the car and then gets in the passenger seat.

“So. Hi.” Lily says in greeting, eyeing him curiously, looking bemused. “You’re all the way here to pick me up, huh? Mr. C sure knows how to make a girl feel special.”

Specter shakes his head again in disbelief, but he finds it in himself to cling to some semblance of professionalism, trying not to sound too annoyed as he says, “You kept me waiting for five hours.”

Wild green curls bounce over her shoulder as she shrugs. “And I’ve had to wear this stupid wig for two months, Spec. Cry about it.”

Two months. Specter thinks about it. He actually hasn’t seen or talked to Lily for much longer than that. Not that he’d ever gone looking these days, anyway. He knows she keeps herself booked and busy.

“They said you’re due for extraction.” he says. “Need me to do anything?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I’ve clocked out for the night.” she said, reaching over the rearview monitors and swiping at it to turn it back into a mirror. She sprays her hands with something she got from the little purse on her side, then starts taking off her contacts.

Specter looks away. He’d seen debauchery and violence and horrors, and he’s not afraid to admit that he still can’t do eye shit. It’s just too close to home.

“You quit?” he asks instead, opting to observe their surroundings, making sure there are no prying eyes on them.

He hears Lily hum. “No, that would leave a trail for me. So I’m just going home. Told the other girls the tips sucked tonight so I might pick up a side job on the way. If I don’t ever come back, they’d just think I probably picked the wrong car. Neater that way. Just another girl gone.”

That’s fucked up, Specter thinks. But it’s not new, this side of the planet, on this speck of the galaxy.

“So we can just go?” he says, finally looking back at her, relieved to see bright green eyes. He knows they’re still not her real ones, but this is a more familiar color to him.

“Yep. Take me away, mister~” she says in an overly flirty voice, definitely the one she’s been using for her current cover.

“Nope. That’s gross.” he says.

Lily laughs.

It’s still one of Specter’s favorite sounds.

“How about the asset, then?”

The asset, this time. Singular. Because knowing now that it’s Lily he’s been sent to pick up here, he has a better picture of the actual job.

He isn’t here to just extract an embedded agent, or give her a safe ride home.

Lily is never just anyone’s passenger.

Specter understands now that he was sent here to meet up with his partner.

“The name’s Malcolm Flint.” Lily says, starting to unclasp her earrings and necklaces. “Worked for Big C for a couple years. Trusted with real insider stuff. Started to report to work less and less a few months ago, then stopped altogether, called in sick. Currently considered AWOL.

“Shortly after that, proprietary info started leaking in the market. The company folks traced it to an operation here, sent me to look in, and guess who I found hanging around the back rooms?”

Ah. This is almost routine then, for Specter. Most of the jobs he got from Cabot are retrieval jobs – either stolen confidential info, or the foolish creature who dared to steal them to try to sell them off.

Specter listens as she continues to supply him with more information. Lily makes it thorough but concise, highlights first – always able to tell him the parts of her intel that he’d be most concerned about even before he asked about them.

Then she hikes up her already very short dress and retrieves a very tiny item from… somewhere too high up the side of her thigh.

“…and here’s all the other details you’ll want a visual for.”

He doesn’t say anything as he takes the microchip. He rolls up his right sleeve to reveal sleek red metal, and loads the chip in a small slot just to the side of his forearm. Various panels pop up in his right eye’s vision. He starts studying. She doesn’t say anything to his silence, and just goes to start undoing her wig.

Even with all the data she provides, Specter knows Lily is still holding information from him. That’s all fine by him. He trusts her to know what he needs to know. All the other top secret Big Cabot Company shit, he’s better off not knowing.

Anyway, she doesn’t get clients as high profile as “Big C” for nothing. She is a top-tier informant, evident as the man himself values her enough to explicitly want her back safe.

“Hey,” she says after giving him all of five minutes to go through maps, documents and photos. “I get that you gotta keep it very cool in here because of your arm, but do you have like, a blanket or something…?”

Specter keeps his attention on his reading. “This is a rental.”

She scoffs. “Of course it is, you’re stingy but you’re not so cheap you’ll go around in this junk.”

“There’s no blanket.” he says, just so she’ll get it. “You can step out, it’s warmer. You won’t be the only one standing outside a car.”

“Um. Fuck you?”

Specter sighs, takes his jacket off and hands it over to her.

If it happened to be anyone other than Lily complaining in his passenger seat, he would have probably just kicked them out the hovercar until they’re ready to not complain anymore.

Whatever. It’s old habits, or something.

Lily mumbles a small “See? There’s the gentleman I know.” as she slips her arms through his jacket sleeves and pulls the garment close around her, making herself warm. “Thanks, babe.”

Old habits.

Specter returns to his reading. After a while, Lily is finally able to take off her horrid neon green wig, and he glances at her direction to see her shake her head and comb her fingers through her hair.

It’s much shorter than he remembers, falling right above her shoulders now, but it is still just as vibrant.

Of course she catches him looking. “What?” she blinks, tucking strands behind her ear.

This close, with the neon lights from the buildings all around them, her green eyes and fiery red hair reflect bright cyan and magenta. She’s a splash of colors in this dark, cold hovercar.

Spec only shakes his head, and returns to analyzing their intel.

Lily chuckles, and goes to wipe off her makeup with a small towel and some kind of gel that she once again retrieves from her trusty purse.

She doesn’t let him be in peace, though. “Oh, wow, the new haircut suits you, Lily! Thanks, Spec. This way it’s easier to put wigs on! The long hair was a hassle to maintain anyway… It’s cool, babe, you look good with any hair-”

Specter fights a scowl, because that would delight her too much. “I don’t sound like that.”

“You do, in my head.”

“Your head is wrong.”

“Yeah, I missed you too.” is all she says.

In all the years he has known her and been with her, he has never won an argument… because she is always the one who decides when the fight is over.

“So what’s new with you?” she asks, almost absently.

He shrugs, then he keeps reading. He has no time for talk like this.

Well. Technically, he does have time for talk like this, because this is a stakeout, and from the intel he just got, they have a couple more hours until they have to follow their mark home to “retrieve” him.

But he really isn’t in the mood for the talking thing right now.

“Nothing.” he tells her.

Of course she takes this in stride. “Awesome. Okay, my turn. I have a new cat.”

Specter hates that he couldn’t help but reply. “Another one?”

“Yeah. I was so sad when Velvet died. And I don’t like even numbers so I got a new one just to keep the number odd.”

Five cats. He wonders who she left them with, because from what she told him, she has been on this job for two months. But that’s none of his business anymore.

Still, he nods. “Sorry to hear that.” He spares her a glance, just to let her know he’s trying not to be as much of a jerk as he could be, right now. “Velvet.”

He does know how much she loves her pets…

“Yeah, she was a mean old bitch until the end though. Literally. So mean and so old.”

…and Specter did like Velvet.

“Okay, back to you.” she says, jumping on a new topic like she’s flicking a switch. That easy.

“I really don’t have anything good for you, Lil.”

He hopes the nickname drop might soften her up a little, and make her leave him alone.

Of course he’s wrong.

“Wow. Good update. No, seriously, you have something. I just know it. Last time I saw you was last year, Spec. Maybe even longer. You’re not that boring.”

“I’m reading intel.” he says lamely.

“Your blue eye flickered twice. You’re done processing all that.”

What the fuck, Specter thinks.

He does hate working with Lily. Lily knows him – from before and more importantly, after. Lily knows him too well. Lily also knows that he can never hate her.

“Wait, no, I remember!” she grins, turning to him.

The uncharacteristic makeup is gone, and so now Specter is unable to deny anymore that the person sitting beside him in the cold and dark of the rented hovercar is the girl he had grown up with.

Which is why it kinda stings, the way she says her next words-

“You got a new cat too, didn’t you? That little thing that hangs around you these days? What’s it’s name again?”

Specter pauses, frowning at her. “That’s-… How did you even-“

“You can’t seriously be asking that.”

“I seriously am, though.”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, okay. Word gets around, we run in the same circles, job perk, I keep tabs on all my ex-boyfriends – take your pick.”

That just raises more questions. “All of them?”

“Fine. All my ex-boyfriends who I do give a shit about. You’re on that list, congratulations.”

Specter grunts, evading her look. Her gaze has always been sharp, but this green shade she had taken to wearing everyday makes her stares too piercing.

“So?” she prods, crossing her arms across her chest, looking cozy bundled up in his jacket. “What is it, anyway? A pet? A toy?”

“He.” Specter corrects. “Not a pet. Or toy.”

Lily nods, face open, ready to listen. “Sure… Look, all I know is that you’re seen around town these days being followed by a cute little cat boy thing. So he’s some kinda assistant, then?” She raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t think you were the type to get one of those helper bots-”

“He’s not a-… He’s not really a bot. Not totally.” Specter says, trying to think about how to explain Kitty, where to start- “He’s more… a person.”

“A cat person.” Lily nods, taking it in, using what he knows is her full data-gathering mode. “The ears were mods?”

“Uh. Not exactly.”

“Y’know, I would’ve believed the bot thing more.”

Specter looks at her, eyes narrowed. “That hard to believe I can make a new friend?”

Lily looks right back at him, lips pursed, only half apologetic. She does know him so well – “And this new friend’s name is…?”

He looks down, flicks some switches to start up the hovercar. “Kitty.”

“Are you serious?” she asks, evidently trying not to laugh. “You suck at naming things, you know-”

Specter huffs. “He named himself. I told you, he’s a person.”

“Huh. Okay.”

“Where are we going?”

She reaches over, starts tapping at the dashboard console herself. Already a co-pilot. “There’s a station close by. I got my getaway bag in one of the lockers. We’re not doing anything until I’m out of this dress.”

He doesn’t argue. The sooner she gets practical clothes, the sooner he gets his jacket back. A map comes up on one of the monitors, and he feels the car lift up from the ground.

As he starts driving, Lily asks, “Okay, you’re gonna tell me more about this little Kitty friend of yours.”

“Or what?”

“Or I start talking about the good ol’ days, and like, flirt with you. Maybe take this jacket off to make the most out of this dress. What do you want?”

Specter groans. This is almost worse than the five-hour boring stakeout.

(one year ago)

“What do you mean, it’s human?” Specter asks, looking at the scans on the screens with bafflement. “I checked myself. The case is 80 years old, and the battery was dead.”

Sep – Septimus, but he doesn’t like being called that anymore – had been busy entertaining customers at the bar when Specter came in that night. Specter regularly brought him stuff scavenged from some junk yard, usually a bot to fix or a droid to strip for parts… but this time is different.

Specter had brought in a case. A large one.

Sep, with his dark skin, tall heavy-set build, and tied back dreadlocks, usually gave people who didn’t know him or those partial to stereotypes an intimidating impression of him. Specter knows this to be distinctly untrue – the man took one look at the case and let his curiosity win in an instant, beaming excitedly as he abandoned his post to lead Specter to his basement workshop.

He made it clear that he is doing Specter a favor, prioritizing him. Specter preferred to think he in turn did the customers a favor. Sep may be one of the best hackers and mechanics in Aster-1A, but the man barely made a half-decent bartender.

Right now, despite an initial attempt to play it cool, Sep looks fully invested – reaching over and adjusting some cables connected to the open case. Laid there, curled up is an unconscious figure that Specter had initially thought was simply a depowered or decommissioned assistant droid.

The mechanic adjusts his glasses before going back to his keyboard to type.

“Both true… It’s really lucky the energy core is intact, but I’m not surprised, the unit looks expensive. It is old, though, like you said – 80 years old. So it will take a lot of hours of charging until the case is powered up enough to wake our little friend here.”

Specter looks at the body in the case again. Curled up tight like so, he couldn’t tell the intended gender presentation of the droid – all he could see was the pale skin and skin-tight suit. It is remarkably not intended to look fully human though, with the unnatural dark green hair and the matching cat ears and tail.

“From what I’m able to pull up though, after that, it will be pretty self-sufficient. It’s got its own power source, not dependent on the case-“

“So it is a droid.” Specter confirms, stepping back when Sep retrieves a few more gadgets that will probably help with scanning and diagnostic work.

Sep leans back on his chair as he explains, “Well. The shell-… The body’s… pretty typical of older model pleasure droids. Even some current models, really, but only low to mid-range ones. So it will probably have human movement, sensations and physicalities, ’cause, y’know, what folks use them for-“

Specter doesn’t need details about that part. “Got it-“

“But the initial readings of brain- well, neural activity I’m seeing now?” Sep looks at the readings in his screens again and lets out an excited chuckle. “So cool. It’s human.”

“You’re saying it’s got a human brain. Like an intact, working one. In a droid body.”

Sep looks at him with a raised brow. “Look, artificially-made humans aren’t new. I mean- Sorry to bring up a sore spot, but… You, yourself, half of you-“

“Don’t.”

“Okay, sure, well-… Ah!” the man snaps, then points a finger at Specter. “Cabot! Uncle C, right? The old man. He looks 60. He’s much, much older than 60. It’s not unheard of, folks who got modded up so much the only human part left with them is their brain…”

“But didn’t you say this is an actual droid model? Discontinued like a century ago?” Specter asks, narrowing his eyes on one of the screens, where an old document has been pulled up.

He reads the text – ‘Model: K1-T, Manufacturer: AideTech (Cabot Industries), Purpose: Companion, Status: Discontinued, Active Units: 0′

“That’s what’s cool about it. Apparently it was discontinued ’cause it was too advanced. Like, it’s so interesting… It’s both so advanced and so… old…”

Specter knows the mechanic will just go nerd out, mumbling to himself if he doesn’t keep them on track. “Explain.”

“So. I haven’t done all the research but from what I’ve gathered here, it was really advanced for the time because apparently it’s the first time they were able to bring actual human sentience in a fully mechanical body. So, they were so excited to release this mass-produced, ‘actual human’ companion they just trusted it to work and released the model without like, safeguards. For the unit.”

“It says here it’s a companion droid.”

“That’s how they marketed it.”

Specter frowns. “Companion droids should be fully programmable. If it’s got a human-“

“Well, yeah. Obviously they didn’t bother having that feature with these ones. Just put implant mods for like, so-called ‘submissive companion’ instincts, but that’s about it. Things went downhill from there ’cause, y’know, humans. That’s why I said it’s so old. No limiters, no programming. So… cases of misuse, abuse, the poor things dealt with all of that. It totally won’t pass any ethics and safety standards today. I guess AideTech realized they fucked up at some point, though, so the units were pulled back.”

Specter looks towards the figure again. Regular companion droids look fully human out of the box, and are often dressed up and modded with different features to their masters’ preferences, which might have been the case for this one. They’re a common sight in Aster-1A across all social classes, though Specter knows “companion” is a catch-all term. Some were indeed used for simple companionship, while some were status symbols, some were kept to satisfy their owners’ sexual demands. With the kind of people Specter has had to deal with over the years, he is no stranger to seeing them abused or misused.

Sep is still talking as he looked into the data, the finer details lost on Specter – “But like, it is really cool, ’cause that human sentience shit became the basis of a lot of the AI virtual assistants we have today… Cabot, man. They really had their hands on everything-“

Spectre steps forward again, crossing his arms across his chest. “You’re saying when this… wakes up… they’re a person.”

“I can say it’ll be more person than machine. Hate to say it, buddy, its make is a bit like yours now. Except they were made like this, instead of having been… y’know…”

Specter knows. Specter knows what’s been done to him, to his body, to make him so much like the droid in the case. “Modified.”

“Yeah…” Sep adjusts his glasses again before he looks towards Specter. “So… What do you want me to do? This one’s your catch, man. You said you wanted parts appraisal, right? We can stop charging it so it doesn’t wake up…”

“The parts… they’re all good? Full mobility?” Specter asks.

“Yeah. They’re good parts, too. A bit old, will need a bit of maintenance to start with, but I’m pretty sure they’re functional…”

That actually is what he came here for. He found a box – 80 years old, battery totally drained – so he assumed the unit inside is just a hollow, decommissioned unit. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d taken an old droid to be taken apart for precious parts. They make good bases and material for prosthetics, which are always needed in the orphanage or by folks from the lower districts.

But those readings… If Sep is right – and Sep is usually right – that changes things.

“I’m taking it home. Finish up charging there. You said there’s an implant, but the rest would be a proper, human consciousness?”

Sep nods. “Yep.”

“Disable the implant.”

“You got it, hotshot.” Sep starts typing, but after a few seconds, he looks up again. “Do I wipe their memories too?”

Specter frowns. He doesn’t know how this unnamed droid has been treated the last time they were active. There is a good chance their memories are not all good.

But Specter knows what it’s like – to wake up with no memories, to have to work on getting them back, and to have them be broken – bits and pieces for him to piece together.

“No.” he tells Sep. “Leave those as they are.”

.

Hours later, Specter finds himself calling Sep, as he stood before a crying, shaking, panicked droid.

“You said you disabled the implant.” he grits out over comms.

Sep sounds out of it, voice hoarse, probably from sleep. “What? Oh- Well, I-… I did? I swear I did-“

“You sure you didn’t miss any? ‘Cause this-… this- they’re having a full on panic attack on me right now-“

“Oh.”

Specter huffs in disbelief. “The fuck you mean ‘oh’?”

He looks at the droid again, the poor thing is on their knees, trembling, begging. Spec has never seen a droid cry before. Some just don’t have that feature at all. This one is crying – complete with what actually looked like tears streaming from scared golden cat eyes.

“He really gave me away- He said he would if I didn’t stop- I tried- I really tried- P-Please… Please, I will do anything! Please don’t- No more, I’ll be good… I promise I’ll be good, master-“

“Spec.” he hears over the comms. “The implant was for them to have submissive instincts, and I disabled that, yeah.” – then there’s a deep sigh – “But they still have their memories – all of it – and whatever memories those are, implant or not, they will act on that information…”

Oh. This time it’s Specter who comes to a realization.

Just because the droid isn’t compelled to submit to an owner anymore, because it had prior experience of having – needing – to do so to avoid punishment… of course it would remember to do that.

Of course. Of course, if they remembered being hurt, they will try to do anything to not “deserve” any more pain.

Specter knows this. Specter had been this.

With a sigh, he gets down on his knees as well, on level with the droid.

“Hey. Hey, I’m not-…” he cuts himself off as he realizes he doesn’t know how to make the panicked droid believe his words.

Then it hits him. He takes his jacket off, raises his steel red robotic right arm. “See this? I’m like you.”

The droid freezes momentarily, looking at his arm, confused, trying to make sense of what they’re seeing.

Then Specter reaches for the red scarf around his neck and sets it aside too. He tilts his head and brushes his long hair aside to reveal the crude scar at the nape of his neck, and the blinking red glow of the implant under his skin.

“And… this. Looks messed up, right? It is. It messed me up so bad I hurt all over, all the time. This means I can’t touch you. I can’t hurt you.”

The droid calms down slightly, and the arms they had brought around themself loosen up. Their hands come together and they start fidgeting shakily instead. “M-Master is hurt…?”

Specter shakes his head, and in the calmest voice he could muster, he says, “Not Master. Call me Spec.”