Lawrence stretched out on a bench on his back, legs propped up on the arm. It wasn't particularly comfortable, but at least the plastic bench seat didn't retain the scents of every ass that had rested on it today. His tail hung off the side, tip sometimes brushing the floor and only occasionally being tugged or kicked by a rambunctious or curious child. He wore a visor that looked like those big blocky sunglasses optometrists used to give to people with dilated pupils, and he'd long learned to ignore the slight weight of the data drive tugging on one side where it was plugged in.

The sounds of humanity surrounded him, but the visor's earbuds helped block that out. His field of vision was filled with more files than he could really count any more, folder icons opening up with text files, news articles, spreadsheets, and pictures of faces and company logos. The edges of his vision were littered with sports scores and -- because he was hooked into the airport's network -- ads for the various restaurants and stores in the airport food court. One corner showed him arrivals and departures and tried to convince him to take advantage of ticket flash sales. It was like staring at a coffee shop message board, if the various ads and notes on index cards were animated.

A news feed ran across the bottom: FDA has questions about NUBio drug trials ... New strain of 'Moriarty' computer virus emerges ... Senator Silva makes plea for biotech legislation ... Network outage downtown and so forth. Normally, if Lawrence had paid a little too much attention to any of those, it would have opened up a news article window over what he was working on. Being aware of his current, kinda tired, easily distractible state, he disabled that feature. And in its own way, having the news feed to block out helped him focus on the files that Steve had dropped off.

"Please tell me you didn't spend my money on that."

Lawrence hit a button on the side of the visor to flip up the eyeshield. Everything but the ads went translucent and he could see the windows and ceiling of the airport. He could also see Melody standing over him, frowning. The augmented reality view of the visor brought up a display with 'helpful' directions to the stores in the ads. A frame appeared around her face and the visor automatically brought up links to her social media profiles and previews of publicly-available photos, thanks to a basic facial recognition system built into most AR operating systems.

He immediately dismissed that, for fear that she'd think he was staring at her face as much as anything else.

"Or at least just tell me it's a fancy face mask because you were trying to take a nap," Melody continued.

"One sec, lemme just..." He pulled the visor off and sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Okay, yeah, I bought this out of one of the vending machines with the card. But I've got cash back at the apartment. I can pay you back. I just didn't think to bring it with me."

Melody's frown remained steady.

"Ironically, the cash I have at your place comes from selling my old visor -- y'know, that half one that clings to the side of my head -- to Tom because it was being tracked," Lawrence, nervous and a little loopy from fatigue, talked quickly as if he were being forced to. "And yes, yes, I was going to take a nap. But then I decided 'Hey, I can do something a little more productive than sleeping.'"

The raccoon's frown now included a raised eyebrow.

"No, look, I was going over the stuff I got from Steve." Lawrence held up the visor so she could see the drive plugged into a port hanging off the stem. "Please say something so I can stop trying to explain myself."

Melody's gaze followed a wire in the visor that ran to the back of his head.

"Is that thing plugged into your brain?" she asked.

"Yeah, I got an interface installed about a year and a half ago. Work thing, only a Class I."

"Is it safe to have that hooked up here?" She gestured to the airport around them.

"I'm not running anything off the headware. This type is mostly for commands and controls anyways." He reached up and unplugged the wire from a port before lightly rubbing the back of his head to cover it with a flap of skin. "Well, also as a bookmark list for later review."

"Do you have a deck for that? Like Tom's?"

Lawrence raised an eyebrow. "I've got some gear I can use to connect my brain to the net, but it's all consumer grade, not like Tom has. Why do you ask?"

"I'm just wondering why you need Steve -- or Tom, really -- if you can just plug your brain in and do your own hacking."

The fox couldn't help but snort at that.

"I'm not a hacker, that's why."

Melody looked annoyed again. "Lar, I know you're a genius computer engineer and you know tech stuff. Is there something I should know that's snort-worthy?"

"It's different skill sets. Imagine a set of twins, geniuses with steady hands. One becomes a heart surgeon and the other becomes a brain surgeon. Sure, they're both great doctors, but I wouldn't ask the heart surgeon to install an epilepsy implant or get the brain surgeon to replace a valve unless I was desperate. 'Computer engineering' is pretty broad.

"I mean, Tom's not much of a hacker either," Lawrence continued. "He's good, don't get me wrong, but there's a reason why he's paying the bills with tech instead of code. And from what I've seen, Steve's damn good at this. Look, I can run a script here and there, occasionally get into some academic databases and news sites I should be paying for..." Lawrence straightened up and stretched, his back popping in a couple of places. "But doing my own 'hacking' and investigation work without help is how I left a trail that's got mercenaries chasing me all over the damn city."

"Good point." Melody reached up and ruffled the fur on the sides of his head to get out the little 'dents' left from the visor stems. He reflexively tried to pull his head away and she just grabbed the base of his ear. "Hold still. There."

Lawrence self-consciously ran his fingers through the fur.

"So are you off work?" he asked.

"Yup. Ready to go whenever you are. Unless you want to stick around and see just how awkward I can make this," she said, smirking.

"No, no, I'm good. I'm good."

* * *

Lawrence kept the visor hooked back in as Melody drove back to the shop. After some fiddling, he found a way to plug in a car charger so the battery didn't run down. He continued to go through Steve's infodump, looking for any names or even just proper nouns that seemed familiar. He went through everything Steve could find on Shaw: every press release, every publicly-known contract, every trade magazine article. His tailtip idly twitched as his connected brain and eye movements sent commands to move and sort files. The tail stopped.

"Fuck me running," he said as he sat up in his seat.

"We tried that once, wasn't a great idea," Melody said, completely deadpan. "What's up?"

"Shaw knows Dr. Landau." Lawrence flipped up the eyeshield again so he could look at Melody. He winced at the sudden influx of external light. The AR display lit up with real-time traffic and weather reports. Almost every flat surface in view held a digital billboard that Melody couldn't see. He envied her for her windshield's ad-blocker.

"That looks ridiculous on you. What's this about Dr. Landau? He's the..."

"...the guy who used to work at Bodyshape, helped develop the Conversion process, is partially responsible for the Reversion," the fox rattled off. "Shaw consulted with him on a project. The details aren't public other than that the collaboration happened, but it comes up in some documentation for some sort of biotech project. He used to be kind of a big deal in the field, so him coming out of retirement for this caught someone's attention."

"Isn't he dead?"

Lawrence's ears laid back. "God, I hope not. At first I was a little afraid to try and find him after the other night, and I don't think there's been anything about him in the news. I just kind of lost track."

Lawrence frowned. He felt bad about forgetting about the old man. Well, you've had a lot going on, a voice in his head reminded him.

The visor, picking up on certain key phrases and proper nouns, immediately began a news search for Dr. Landau in a window at the corner of his vision. Nothing. He blinked the window closed and made a note to disable the auto-mic.

"But what's going on with him in the thing you found?" Melody asked, trying to remain focused on the road.

"Shaw brought him in as a consultant on something they were working on for NUBio. A couple of years ago. This might be what got their attention, if they came after me."

"You talking to Dr. Landau? Why would that get their attention?"

"I have not the foggiest," the fox said with a concerned frown. "But it's a thread I can start pulling."

* * *

The moment they got back, Lawrence made a beeline for his backpack. Without looking up he tossed the visor to Tom, before quickly fishing out a wad of cash and handing it to Melody. Tom watched the transaction and frowned.

"Lar, did you take the money I gave you for your high-end eyepiece and basically put it into an overpriced visor you bought at the airport?" the raccoon asked.

"It's the circle of life, Tom. I needed something to go over this." He held up the thumb drive. "And here comes the part where I beg you to run your usual suite of sweeps and software mods over it, scrape out the bloatware, clip out whatever trackers you can, and so forth."

"You couldn't wait until you got back here and, I dunno, bought back your own wiped eyepiece or anything like that?" Tom asked with a frown.

"I... probably could have. Maybe. Look, it's been a rough couple of days, and I couldn't just stretch out and sleep on an airport bench knowing I might've had something useful literally in my hands."

"Yeah, you could have, it's easy," Melody said once she finished putting her work stuff away.

"Regardless," Tom began with an eyeroll as he plugged a tablet into the visor and tapped at the screen. "Found anything useful?"

A custom-built set of utilities ran over the visor's firmware, tweaking certain systems and filtering out useless and intrusive apps. While that went on, Lawrence gave him the rundown of what he'd learned about Shaw and their connection to Dr. Landau.

"So it does sound like you hit some sort of 'let's go after him to be sure' threshold," Tom said as the utilities finished. He unplugged the visor, checked it, and handed it back. "Honestly, seeing you in this vending machine piece of crap makes me want to just swap this for your eyepiece and take the loss."

"As tempting as that is, this will do better for getting on the Hub if I'm out and about. And the eyepiece doesn't have a port for the data stick."

"The eyepiece is a lot better when you're multitasking or on the bike, though."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Melody groaned as she sat down at the kitchen table and just banged her forehead into the surface, leaving it there. "Does. It. Matter," she muttered.

"Melody, if I were a gourmet chef, would I not be right to be offended if my best friend brought home fast food?" Tom asked.

Melody slowly turned her head and gave her brother a look that actually caused him to recoil slightly.

"Brother, dear," she all but growled through clenched teeth. "Would it assuage your ego if Lawrence let you tinker with that visor and make it look a little less out-of-the-box?"

"It... might?"

She sat up and turned to Lawrence, who actually looked a little afraid.

"Lawrence, dear," she began in the same tone of voice. "Would you mind terribly if my brother assuaged his ego by tinkering with the visor you used my card to buy at the airport?"

"I wouldn't mind at all," he was quick to reply.

"There. Problem solved." She rested her head back down on the table. "And Tom, mind doing me a favor?"

"What's that?"

"Go ahead and do that 'record everything Lawrence knows about this mess' thing? So we have something to release to the news when I wind up killing him?"

"We should do that sooner rather than later," Lawrence agreed with a nod.

"Okay, come out into the shop. We'll record it there while I work on this," Tom said, holding up the visor.

Tom turned the 'open' sign on the front door to 'Be back soon.' They found a corner to sit down and get this over with. Tom borrowed a refurbished microphone from his own display case and plugged it into his tablet. He then grabbed a handful of tools and started fiddling around with the visor's case and innards.

Lawrence began by relaying his father's history, his development of what was now known as the Reversion. Leaving out certain names, Lawrence spelled out how he pulled some strings to get his father into a drug trial, his suspicion of the drug's success, and his research into the drug's provenance. This led to his meeting with Dr. Landau, his fleeing the hit squad, and the subsequent kidnapping attempt and his knowledge about Shaw.

Tom asked Lawrence the occasional question to direct some of the information and make sure the recording had enough details to track down the drug and the people who might know how to get it or make it. That last detail came out of his extensive research into the origins of the drug his father had been trying out, and even just speaking it aloud in private he couldn't help but glance at the door for fear of a strike team kicking it in and coming in guns blazing.

"Okay, I think this is a good point to wrap it up," Tom said, stopping the recording after several moments of silence where Lawrence was out of details to volunteer and Tom was out of questions to ask.

"How long have we been at it?" Lawrence asked, stretching.

"Over an hour," the raccoon said. "By the way, this is done." He set down the modified visor.

"That long? Wow." Lawrence hopped off of his seat and looked around. "Where'd Mel go?"

"I think she's off taking a nap," Tom said as he ran the recording through some basic encryption and uploaded it to a few backup sites.

Lawrence stretched and picked up the visor, turning it over in his fingers. Outwardly it was identical aside from a 'Briscoe Refurbishing' sticker on the side, but he was sure it would operate like an entirely different device whenever he got around to plugging it in. He made a note to take it for a spin at some point before he had to use it for something important.

Someone knocked at Tom's door. The raccoon and the fox gave each other a look as Tom went over to the front door and looked out. He smiled and relaxed.

"It's Linda and Dana," he said, opening it up and turning the sign back around to 'open.'

Part of Lawrence wanted to stop Tom, warn him that this is the perfect time for the guy with the gun that Tom couldn't see to shove his way in and menace them all. Then Linda and Dana came in, looking about as weary as he did, but with no psychotic gunman bursting in behind them. And he realized just how stretched thin he was.

Linda tossed something to Lawrence underhanded, and it just bounced off his chest. His keys jingled as they hit the floor.

"Good catch," she deadpanned.

"Thanks, I just wasn't expecting that. It's been a long... however long it's been," he said, grabbing the keys off the floor and pocketing them.

"I can tell. I don't know foxes, but I know 'tired ear and tail droop' when I see it," she said, getting an elbow from her girlfriend.

"Anyhow," Dana began. "We were swinging by to drop off your bike, and also to let you know we're gonna go see your dad here in a few. You said you might have something for us to take to him?"

"Yeah, sorta," Lawrence said. "You're going to take me. Well, I'll drive myself, but you'll be going in with me."

"What?" Tom said. "Is that safe?"

"Now that we've got a better idea of who and what is after me, I don't think they're going to kill me if I go back."

"Lar, you're borderline delirious with fatigue," Tom said, nervously rubbing the side of his neck.

"I can't keep doing this. I can't keep hiding..." Lawrence sighed and closed his eyes. "Also... I need to see my dad. I need to check in on him. I need to sleep in my own bed tonight, not that your couch doesn't hold a lot of great memories."

"Hey now," Tom gently warned.

"I just mean nights where we hung out and partied and all that back when we were in school. Get your mind out of the gutter."

"Lawrence, are you sure?" Dana asked, looking at the fox, nose twitching with concern. "I can guarantee you, this isn't going to be easy. Even aside from whether someone's watching you..."

"Dana, I've been taking care of my dad for months, I know what it's like," the fox said with a sad smile. "Helmet's on the bike?"

Linda nodded.

"Then let me gather up a few things and we'll go."

"Want me to wake up Melody before you go? Since you said you're going to be staying there tonight?" Tom asked.

Lawrence opened his mouth to answer and stopped. He looked vaguely in the direction of her room, biting his lip thoughtfully. His tail flicked once.

"Better to let her sleep," he heard himself say. "I'll call her tomorrow."

Tom gave him a reproachful look, but just nodded.

* * *

Lawrence sighed as he made his way down the hall to the apartment he shared with his father. Linda and Dana hung out in the hall, outside the door, while Linda took hits off of her puffer and let the vapor waft up to the ceiling. The fox reflexively wrinkled his nose at the smell, though it really wasn't any more of a problem than the aromas of other residents of the building.

"You're pretty sure there's nobody watching the building?" he asked them softly.

Dana shrugged.

"Here's the part where we remind you we're not spies," Linda said, more than a little grumpy herself. Both Dana and Lawrence gave her a look but out of mutual sympathy didn't say anything.

"Alright, thanks. If you two wanna head home, you can."

"I still want to check in on him," Dana said. "Just to be thorough."

The fox offered a grateful smile, unlocked the door, and came in.

"Hey dad, I'm home!" he called out, trying to keep the tired and worried edge out of his voice. He put his keys in his jacket pocket as he waved Linda and Dana in.

"Hey there, are you--" Lawrence's father said before stopping as he came out of the kitchen and paused at the sight of Lawrence. He only paused for a second, but in that second he had to stop and process that there was a fox in his living room, that this fox had his son's voice, that this fox was his son, and the reason he had a fox for a son was because he himself was a fox. And then came the guilty look from knowing he was caught processing that. "Are you back from your trip?"

Lawrence took the wordless monologue of his father's facial expressions in stride, having seen it many times already. Even with the seeming miracle drug he was testing, the older fox still had lapses. But at least they were lapses, and not his default setting. His father, Dale, was about an inch shorter and noticeably wider than him with red fur, black-tipped ears, white-tipped tail, and green eyes. His muzzle was tinged with gray, but as one of the original Converts he bore more than a passing resemblance to pretty much every early Converted fox, back when the morph bodies were built on templates. Lawrence found it hard to pick out the details that differentiated him from other older foxes, and most of those details came from either his scent or the effects of aging.

"Yeah, I'm back," Lawrence said, immediately crossing the room to give his old man a big hug. "I know I was only gone a day and a half or so, but did Linda and Dana take good care of you while I was away?"

"Oh yes, they were very nice. Picked up some groceries for me, made sure I was taking my medication, all that. And having a couple of lovely ladies to chat with wasn't all bad," he said with the playful wink most older straight men think is a compliment to younger women.

Dana's ears flushed a bit, and to her credit Linda politely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Lawrence also noticed that her ever-present puffer had seemingly vanished the moment they'd come into the apartment. He offered them an apologetic smile and turned back to his father.

"I told them I was coming back today but they wanted to come in and check in on you one more time," he explained to his father.

"It's been a pleasure helping you out, sir," Dana said as she stepped forward, shaking Dale's hand. The fox's broad, furred paw all but wrapped around the mouse girl's delicate pink fingers.

"The pleasure's been mine, sweetie."

Dana pulled a small slip of paper with a number on it.

"If you need anything, you give us a call. Take care, you two," she said.

"Thanks again, for everything," Lawrence said.

Without another word the two of them left.

Lawrence turned to give his father another hug, a tighter one this time.

"Whoa, whoa, there, I didn't know foxes give bear hugs," Dale said with a chuckle, his normally-limp tail giving a half-hearted, subconscious wag.

"Sorry, just... it was a long trip. I'm glad to be back."

"Where was it you went again? Something for work?" Dale asked.

"Yeah, I just..." There was a moment where Lawrence considered telling him everything. About the drug trial, about Dr. Landau, about the hit squads, about Linda's kidnapping.

The moment passed.

"They had a new factory building something I designed, and I had to go check out the equipment just in case. It was kind of a last-minute thing."

"You shouldn't have to apologize for living your life, buddy," Dale said as he sat down in his chair. He winced and shifted, having accidentally sat on his tail. "You shouldn't feel like you have to spend so much time taking care of your old man."

"Yeah, but I do anyways." Lawrence hung up his jacket, set down his backpack, and flopped onto the couch, face-down.

"It's only nine-thirty. Pretty early for you to be this tired."

"Yeah, I know," he muttered into the couch cushions. "It's been a long couple of days, and I'm really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed."

Lawrence closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the couch. The aromas were familiar and unmistakable: his own scent and his father's, the last couple of meals he cooked... somewhere, buried underneath where he could only 'reach' by jamming his nose down between the cushions, there were bits of his mother's scent though she hadn't been to the apartment in a decade or more. He didn't go looking for them but he knew they were there. He was going through enough, he didn't need that reminder.

His ears swiveled. His father had said something and he'd missed it because he was so in his own head.

"I said, did you want to do anything specific for dinner? Or is this a pizza night?"

"Pizza," Lawrence said as he sat up and straightened the fur on his muzzle, feeling his whiskers spring up from under his fingers. "Little late for dinner, isn't it?"

"I took a nap earlier and overdid it," his father said as he pulled out his phone and brought up the pizza ordering app. "Is everything alright with you? You seem 'off.'"

"Yeah," Lawrence lied. His jaw clenched as he watched his father struggle with the phone, having trouble getting his fingerpads on the screen just right for the touch to register without clawing it. Every part of him wanted to just take the phone and do it himself, but he knew that was just stress in a devil suit whispering in his ear.

Eventually Dale managed to get the pizza ordered, but Lawrence could feel his fur standing up a bit from the stress. The only comfort he could take was that his father's struggles with the Reversion made it hard for him to pick up on morph-specific body language so he wouldn't know how upset Lawrence was. And then Lawrence felt really shitty for considering even briefly that there was some benefit to the scenario.

"I think I need to get some rest," he groaned as he rubbed his muzzle in his hands. "I think as soon as we've inhaled this pizza, I'm going to pass out in my own bed for about twelve hours."

Lawrence's phone, in his bedroom where he'd left it once upon a time, began ringing. He hadn't thought to bring it with him when he first went out to Dr. Landau's, between his anxiety and the fact that any calls he could have forwarded to his eyepiece. (In his defense, he didn't think he'd have to ditch the eyepiece.) He didn't want to think about any messages from work he missed. He got up and shuffled into his room, where he grabbed it off the charger.

Melody.

Fuck.

"You asshole!" Melody yelled as soon as he picked up.

He winced, ears laid back. He heard his father set something down hard in the other room, like he'd been startled by a noise and quickly put something down so as not to drop it.

"I'm sorry," Lawrence groaned. He made sure his door was closed, to try and spare his father the argument as best he could. "I just wanted to let you rest and get home as quickly as possible."

"You chickenshit," she hissed. "You were just planning on leaving me behind."

"Melody, it's not like I'm leaving the country or something. I just wanted to go back to my place, check in on my dad, maybe stay here tonight." Lawrence sat down on the edge of his bed, his tail in his lap. He nervously stroked it as his eyes wandered over old movie and video game posters he put up in high school and college and just never got around to taking down.

"And then what? I know you're not done with all this yet. Not by a long shot."

"'All this?'"

"The conspiracy crap. Someone trying to kill or kidnap you. What's going on with the Reversion."

Lawrence sighed.

"I got the very distinct impression that you wanted to be rid of all this, that you didn't want to get dragged into it more than you already have been," he said, keeping his tone as even as he could.

"I also want you to be safe. Someone needs to keep an eye on you. Tom loves you like a brother, but he can only do so much."

"Don't you think that makes our relationship seem weird, if he sees me that way?" Lawrence asked, with a forced smirk that Mel couldn't see.

"I'm not fu--" She stopped and took a breath. "I'm not playing with you, Lawrence. I don't need to know where you're going, but just taking off like that isn't cool."

He groaned and rubbed his muzzle.

"I told Tom I'd call you tomorrow, and I meant it."

"I've heard that before," she said in an accusing tone.

He winced. He deserved that.

"Okay, fine, what do you want to hear from me, Mel? What do you want?"

"What do... I mean, I want..."

"Form the sentence in your head first, then speak it," Lawrence said, firm but not harsh. Shit like this is why we broke up, he thought. He was rapidly losing his cool, but he was trying to keep this from spiraling out of control more than it already was.

Melody just breathed for a few moments. Lawrence had known Melody long enough that he could imagine her closing her eyes and figuring out what she wanted to say.

"I want to stick by you and keep you safe. Yes, I'd much rather my life be as simple as it was before you showed up at the airport looking for me. But I think that ship has sailed. And if it is possible to get to that point, I think the only way out is through. Helping you get this over with will do that better than sitting around and waiting for someone to come after me to lure you into a trap."

"Thank you," Lawrence replied, though even he couldn't say whether it was from the sentiment or the fact that she gave him a calm answer.

"So what's next?"

Lawrence thought a moment. Now it was his turn to form the sentence before speaking it.

"Tomorrow I'm going to go into work, and over the course of trying to act as if my life is normal I'm going to try and renew lines of communication with my contact at NUBio. See if we can put some data together and figure out what digital tripwire I stepped on and how to untangle it. Besides, he might be in trouble too and I figure I should at least warn him."

"Here's hoping he didn't sic these people on you in the first place."

"Here's hoping." Lawrence raised his hand in an invisible toast as he agreed.

"You just made some stupid gesture, didn't you?" Melody asked.

"No." He paused and smiled. "Yes."

Shit like that is why we went out for as long as we did.

"Well, okay, my initial outrage has been blunted," she sighed. "I should probably let you get back to your dad now that I've caught up with you. Oh, speaking of which, how is he?"

"Well enough, much as I'd left him. Confused but... but functional."

"Well, tell him I said 'hi.' And give me a call tomorrow, okay?"

Lawrence resisted the urge to point out that he'd planned to do just that all along.

"Okay, Mel. I'll keep you updated."

"I've gotta work so I don't know how much I can really do, but..."

"Mel, it's fine. Seriously. The moment I know what my next step is, I'll give you a call and we'll sort it out."

"The moment," she repeated back to him.

"Yes, the moment. To the literal physical best of my ability to do so. I promise."

A moment of silence on her end, like she was trying to come up with a clever response.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow, then," she said with a sigh.

"Talk to you then."

Lawrence hung up. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves and smelled pizza in the other room. He put on what he hoped was his best reassuring smile and headed out there, to find his father just bringing the pizza over to the table.

"Everything alright?" he asked.

"Yeah, things are great," Lawrence immediately replied.

"I wasn't listening or anything, but was that Melody? She seemed upset."

"Yeah, yeah it was, and she was, but we sorted it out. She says 'hi,' by the way," Lawrence said, trying not to give his father grief for being nosy. He then braced himself for the inevitable follow-up.

"Think you two are getting back together?"

And there it is.

"Not likely, but we're talking and that's usually a good sign."

Lawrence bit back a spiel to follow that about how he wasn't entirely sure if he and Melody could even really comfortably call each other friends, her insistence on preserving his safety notwithstanding. The last thing he needed was his father to insist that he was protesting too much, which would make him question his own motivations and all that. As much as he knew he couldn't entirely prevent it, he did not need to to be distracted by arguing with himself about the situation with Melody the next time someone came at him with a shotgun.

With a sigh, Lawrence got some paper plates out of the cupboard and he and his father started in on the pizza. His father, perhaps rightly suspecting that Lawrence had things on his mind, let them eat in quiet peace. While they ate Dale checked the time, got up, and took some pills before coming back to the table.

"How's the pill supply holding up, dad?" Lawrence asked, eager for something to fill the silence.

"I've think I've got a week's worth, then they'll send the guy to bring over more and take the usual samples and leave a refill. I'm old enough, the routine's easy." He made a dismissive wave.

"I was just checking, since I was gone a couple of days. I worry."

"Well, your friends took good care of me," he said with a nod. "Dana's a sweetheart, but the other one's got a bit of an attitude."

Lawrence laughed. "Yeah, she's got her moments, doesn't she?"

"Have you known them long?"

"Not too long," Lawrence said honestly. "They're friends of a friend. Dana works at a clinic here in the city, and Linda's her girlfriend."

"Yeah, I figured as much," his father said with a nod.

"You mean figured they haven't known me long, or..."

"Both," his father said matter-of-factly. "Tom's friends?"

"You remember Tom?" Lawrence asked as he worked his way down a pizza crust.

"It's been a while since you've spent a lot of time with him, but yeah, I remember." He squinted in thought. "Raccoon, right? Melody's brother?"

"That's right. Tom and Melody Briscoe. They run the shop down on 28th."

"Didn't I know their mom, Marion Briscoe, some years back? Engineer or something. She wasn't a raccoon, though."

Lawrence opened his mouth to say something, paused, and instead took a bite of pizza to buy time for a response.

"Yeah, you knew Marion. Managed an augments factory before the Genehack Plague. She got infected, Converted, and had trouble keeping her job after that. Used her severance to open the repair shop. Retired and moved away years ago, left it to Tom."

"Okay, I knew her before, that explains that... and then she Converted to a raccoon," Dale said, as if that helped him get a grip on it.

It was about the same time you Converted to a fox, Lawrence didn't add. He was worried what argument that would spur if he went out of his way to bring it up. In one potential future, Dale got flustered at the reminder that he was a fox. In another potential future, Dale got pissed off at the implication he needed such a reminder at all.

In the future that actually happened, Lawrence had another bite of pizza. His dad's brow furrowed and his ears drooped as he processed that, like they were trying to lay back but couldn't quite get there. He finished his own slice of pizza and decided against another. He got up, shuffled to the kitchen, and came back with a beer.

An awkward silence settled over them. Lawrence wasn't saying things he was thinking, Dale could sense that Lawrence was deliberately not saying things, and he couldn't bring himself to ask because he was worried about what Lawrence would say.

Lawrence finished his slice of pizza and got up with a stretch.

"You done?" he asked.

His dad waved a hand at the pizza box as if warding it off. Lawrence took what was left and put it in the fridge for later. He came back and just watched from the doorway as his dad fiddled with his phone to change the TV. He had trouble getting his fingerpads to register on the touchscreen again as he tried to dial up a news stream. Lawrence again resisted the urge to just grab the phone from him and do it for him, and hated himself both for the urge and the way he talked himself out of it.

"I've got a long day at work tomorrow, you gonna be okay out here for now?" he asked with a sigh.

"Should be," Dale said as he finally turned the TV to the news. The network blackout around the parking garage got about forty seconds of coverage, talking about how police think it was a deliberate event and not just a system failure, followed by baseless speculation about the 'Moriarty' computer virus even though it normally only affected AI processes. And then it went into a three-minute segment on a pointless celebrity wedding scandal, because it was the news and they did that.

"Night," Lawrence said, everything seeming to fade out as he reached his room and fell onto his bed, still-clothed.