[FP] Calley's Graveyard

Most days, the cat who lived in the center of Mondragon Labs could not be bothered to hunt the local rats.

It was an averaged sized cat. Not a rival for a dog, not a petite lap-bound creature. The hair along its spine marked each boney vertebrae with a distinct tuft of mottled brown and black fur. It could spend hours a day grooming--and frequently did, between naps that left its eyes half-open--but that coat of fur would never look polished and trim. It was always bound to be matted, clumped, and dull. Age, that little tax collector; tallying up the bills each year until it was time to call in the debt. Age, and death. The cat stretched in a slow arch that sent a crackle down the length of its spine to its tail, and unsheathed its claws. Death: a nuisance, easily remedied. Its yellow medicine eyes reflected the grayscale lights from the row of monitors in front of it. Death: hold that thought.

"Pigeon is getting eaten again," the cat yawned into the black headset looped over its ears. It raised a paw, either grooming its whiskers carelessly or adjusting the small microphone that swooned off of the headset in front of its jaws. It sat down again, its tail tucking around its body as if for that extra bit of warmth. Its voice always carried a hiss to it--a cat's mouth wasn't well suited to getting English words out, even though the human vocal chords tucked into its throat were optimum for creating them. Its rusty brown ear gave a twitch as its eyes flicked over the screens. "Hawk, you'd be fastest."

The cat had flattened down its ears well before the answering obstinate shriek. The view of the leftmost monitor began to move--the New York skyline was replaced with the side of a building, and a sidewalk coming up very very fast. The flight path of the camera carrier leveled out at the second story as the cat relayed directions. Hawk was getting to be less and less of a happy camper every day. Far too proud, far too independent. The cat began grooming the base of its tail in humble annoyance. It was time to reabsorb the bird of prey, before it decided to emulate its older brother, Slate.

The very tip of the cat's tail gave a slow, slow twitch. Slate. To return to an earlier thought: death. That was another splinter that needed to be dealt with, sooner rather than later. It could not imagine why it had let that one run freely for so long.

The row of monitors was small. So was the room: it was about the size of a glorified broom closet. It contained a litter box, a water dish, a bag of generic cat food--his favorite--and an unused cat bed, slightly dusty. The overhead light bulb had burned out three days ago. The cat, sitting in the glow of its monitors, hadn't noticed. There were eight screens. Five of them lead to the nearly undetectable cameras its splinters wore.

Hawk, on his looping patrols over the city; a scout for anything and everything of interest on the ground.

Pigeon, with his station in a Central Park, when he wasn't getting picked off by cats of a younger sort than the one in front of the monitor. Bloody useless bird. A good gossip collector, though.

The King Mouse, currently asleep in some abandoned building's wall. A much more useful infiltrator than the others, and well able to defend himself. The cat had not left Mondragon Labs itself for seven years; it had lost the urge to be on the frontlines with its last death, the one that had nearly left it deceased in the permanent sense of the term. The King Mouse ran missions in its place, and did what its little rodent chimera self pleased the rest of the time. It had enough intelligence it its small frame to keep itself entertained.

The fourth monitor was of another cat. A much younger one; white with black spots here and there, and barely out of its kittenhood. It had been given the names Kitten, Checkers, and Mister Fluffywhiskers ten years ago; now, it had been renamed Duke by the little telekinetic that had taken it in. That piece of quadruped nostalgia was the monitor cat's latest foray into the Mansion, after an unpleasant encounter between an X-Goodie telepath and a black Lab had left a hole in its observational network. Hawk had been able to reach the dog's body in time to reabsorb it fully, but the black Lab was useless now. Duke had taken its place.

The fifth monitor was dark, and had been for years. It hadn't taken long for Slate to remove his camera. The cat in front of the monitors licked the back of its boney paw, and began grooming behind an ear.

The next monitor was a constant source of amusement: it rotated between the cameras the government had set all around New York City; a real time slideshow curtsey of Doctor Ingram. Speaking of which: the cat set a paw down on the call button in front of that monitor. "I need a new collar cam for Pigeon, Jim. No rush: it'll take about a week for its mind to recover enough to splinter again."

The garbled unpleasantry of the Good Doctor's reply made it sound like the cat had requested a million dollars to be deposited into its bank account yesterday. A brief tail-swish of amusement followed the thought: the cat remembered when a million dollars still seemed like a lot. Heh. About the same time Duke was living with a green-ribboned girl who called him Kitten, wasn't it?

The next monitor was perhaps the least useful. It simply showed, in multiple panels, the various doors and halls one must walk through to reach this little room. The cat didn't know why it bothered to keep that one around: the security coming here was comparable only to the security it took to get to Doctor Ingram's favorite laboratory. Hunter was the only one who ever came that way, besides the three bored men who brought its food and changed its litter.

The last monitor, by contrast, was usually the most lively. Sparrow was one of the elder splinters; it nearly rivaled Slate. Nine years of independence and experience had compensated for a distinctly lacking initial intelligence quota; the little bird tended to find out the most useful things. It had taken to scouting the Order lately, though, and that was a dangerous route. It was liable that Hawk would have to rush in for a clean up sooner rather than later. No matter, though. Death: something the cat in front of the screen, and all of its splinters, had experienced a very many times. They were all on afternoon tea terms with the man in the black hood.

The cat stretched, and lay itself back down in a creaking crackle of old bones. It was happy with its monitors. It was happy with its splinters. It absolutely adored its headset and its generic cat food. It was even quite content with the irregular visits from Hunter Antonescu, though it didn't quite remember why it was so important to tell the man the things it had learned through its splinters and its screens. It was happy to have an audience, though, and likely to be just as talkative with anyone who made it successfully to this room.

Death: it had taken Calley away, long ago. The ancient cat in the darkened room ran a lively dance of corpses, however. A rumbling purr started deep in its chest as it stared out over its own information empire, although it could not tell you why it wanted one, anymore.