Mus Numena 5: Terrifically Advanced Makeup (Patreon)

Ted stood, frozen, mouth hanging open, until the elevator doors gave up waiting for him and started to close. He put his hand out to block it, and stepped forward out of the car. The mouse woman didn’t move back, big eyes locked onto him.

“I… I don’t know what…how?”

“They hurt us.” Her voice was…odd. Not mechanical or comically squeaky, but just off, like a throat and mouth that hadn’t been made for human speech doing its best imitation.

“I know.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking back and forth. The garage might be nearly empty, but nearly wasn’t completely, and another employee might appear at any minute. “You can’t be here. If they see you, they’re going to think I’m, I don’t know, I’m stealing you or…” He trailed off.

“Help,” she said again, voice trembling. “Please.”

A dozen more valid protests ran through his mind, but the longer he stood here, the greater the chance of being seen. What he needed to do was walk her back to the office and immediately report to Stonebraker and oh God she was crying wasn’t she.

Ted squeezed his eyes shut a moment, took a deep breath, then motioned for her to follow. “Come with me.”

She watched him go, tilting her head. He groaned, hurrying back to her and took her hand. “Come with me,” he repeated, and started walking slowly. This time she followed.

Fortunately, he’d lucked into a spot just a few parking spaces away from the elevator this morning. He reached his car, a Honda Accord still chugging along after nine years, and unlocked it, opening the passenger door for her. She looked at it uncertainly.

“Sit,” he said, pointing at the chair. “Do you understand that?”

She nodded, and climbed into the seat carefully.

“Okay. Uh.” Slight wrinkle in the plan: how in the hell was he going to drive home with a nude, alien woman in the passenger seat without attracting tons of attention? He looked in the back seat. Thank God, he’d left the raincoat there. He opened the back door, pulled it out, and held it out to her. “Put this on.”

She looked between him and it, confused.

“Come on, I’ve seen one of you Dynamice wearing clothes. Clothes?” He put on the raincoat himself, then took it back off and held it out again. “Like that.”

The mouse took the raincoat and started trying to put it on while seated, then got back out of the car and put it on. Again, she seemed to have no concept of personal space; he had to take a step back to stop her from pressing against him. (And that would be so terrible, a sarcastic voice said in his head.)

After she sat down again, he got in the driver’s side and pulled the hood up over her ears. He’d half expected the shimmering fur to feel unnatural, but it didn’t. “See if you can put the seat belt on, like this.” He grabbed his, stretched it across his body, and latched it.

The mouse watched attentively, then searched for hers, grabbed it, and mimicked him, slowly and carefully.

“Okay.” He started the car and pulled out of the parking space, heading toward the garage exit. They passed by another employee, but she was staring at her phone, not at Ted’s car. “Try, uh, try not to let other people see you, all right?”

She looked confused, but nodded.

“How…uh, how did you learn to speak?”

“Other computers,” she said hesitantly. “The big network. The Internet?”

“The Internet.” As he merged onto the freeway, he glanced at her. “How? I mean, are you typing on computers, or are you somehow…connecting yourself to it?”

She tilted her head, visibly processing that. “Connecting yourself.” She paused, then corrected, “Myself.”

“And all of you can do that.”

She nodded.

They drove on in silence for a minute, before Ted looked at her again. “I thought… I thought they’d killed you.”

The mouse tilted her head again, and it took an uncomfortably long time for her to reply. “They did,” she said, voice slightly hoarse now. “I am not her. Not the first one you met. I changed from little mouse to this today.”

He swallowed. “Why do you look exactly like her?”

“So you would recognize me.”

“Are you…uh…are you all a hive mind?”

That took another few seconds for her to process. Then she shook her head. “No.”

“But you’re all networked together.”

She nodded.

A highway patrol car came up behind them, and Ted tensed up until the car passed them on the left.

“Why…why me?”

She answered in a voice barely above a whisper. “You gave us treats.”

He laughed awkwardly. “Oh. Um. I couldn’t have been the only one.”

“You were nice. We noticed you.”

Ted chewed on his lip. He wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. “Do you…have a name? I’m Ted.”

“Ted,” she repeated. “I have a number, but no name. How do I get a name?”

Um. Well, she might not even have parents, given what she was. But plenty of people picked their own name when they were adults. Was she an adult? She undeniably looked adult, but chronologically she was probably like six months—except with Dynamice Max models, that wasn’t applicable. They were physiologically adult virtually from the word go. Was she a person? Legally, likely not, but that didn’t mean anything. Did she know any names to pick? God, Ted, just give her an answer. “I can, uh, I can give you one, or you can pick one yourself.”

She nodded after a moment, but didn’t reply. Ted didn’t know what to say, either, so they drove on in silence.

It took another ten minutes to exit the freeway, and nearly another ten to reach his apartment complex. After he pulled into the garage, he found a spot almost directly under his unit, close to a corner staircase door. “All right. We’re going up two flights, to apartment 242. Uh, can you read?”

“Yes.” She watched him unfasten his seatbelt and open the door, then did the same thing, with just a little less confidence. She beamed when the door opened for her.

He got out and locked the car. She jumped at the little beep. “Do any other humans know you can read?”

“Some humans at the place you just took me away from know it.”

Furrowing his brow at that, he led her upstairs. So far, they’d either been immensely lucky or he just hadn’t noticed people snapping photos with their phones of his car when he drove past. So, just another few steps—

Just before he opened the door from the staircase to the complex’s interior hallway, it opened on its own, a sixty-something woman standing behind it. She started to walk in, stopped, smiled perfunctorily, and held the door open for Ted and the mouse.

He nodded stiffly to her, hurrying past. Don’t notice don’t notice somehow don’t—

As the mouse woman walked past her, the woman let out a short, sharp gasp.

Ted winced inwardly, and turned toward her. Yep, staring with exactly the shocked expression he’d expected someone to have at seeing a beautiful, fur-covered woman wearing only a raincoat. One which, he realized belatedly, wasn’t fastened in front. He hurriedly put an arm around the mouse’s waist, surreptitiously holding the garment closed in the same motion.

“That’s…ah…” the woman stammered.

“Stage costume,” he said.

“Costume?” she repeated, uncertain. The mouse looked just as confused as the woman did, which hardly helped matters.

“Yes. Just…terrifically advanced makeup.” He started to concoct a whole story in his head, then remembered a line from some TV detective show about how when people were lying, they tended to over-explain, to fill in details that nobody was asking for. So he just nodded, guiding the mouse past her. “Have a nice day.”

“You…too.”

He took the mouse’s hand and walked ahead without looking back until he heard the staircase door close again. The woman was gone.

“Costume?” the mouse said.

“Much, much easier as an explanation for right now.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her.

The mouse walked in several steps, into the foyer, and looked back and forth, between the dining/living room ahead and the kitchen to the left.

“So, uh, I can take the raincoat and hang it up with my jacket.” He helped her out of the garment. “We’re going to have to get you real clothes.” It seemed like the right thing to say, even as it started a raft of objections in his head. She wasn’t a houseguest or a family member, wasn’t someone he was supposed to be buying gifts for. Technically, she wasn’t a someone, period, she was…well, she was…

She was, as far as his employer was likely concerned, stolen property worth millions of dollars. If he returned her in the morning and explained the situation, he’d still probably be fired, but maybe he wouldn’t be arrested.

Sighing, he hung up the raincoat, then his jacket. “Okay, um. I don’t actually know what you eat, but even if I had mouse…kibble…it doesn’t seem right given the way you look.”

“We do get mouse food at…” She concentrated a moment. “…Nanolab Sciences. Companies that purchase us sometimes feed us the same thing, but sometimes give us…other things. I do not know the words yet.” She closed her eyes. “Some of those hurt us, too.”

“You, uh, share all of that with each other? Over networks?”

Opening her eyes, she nodded again.

“You’re not supposed to be able to do that.”

She flinched.

“It’s okay.” He held up his hands, gently, making sure it didn’t look like he was raising them in anger. “I’m just…just learning a lot.” He wondered how much of this company scientists like Torgensen actually knew. It’d be trivially easy to learn if you just asked the mice—assuming they answered truthfully—but how many would think about it. “Um, what can you eat?”

“Anything.”

Right, they’d mentioned that, after the mouse this one had modeled herself on had eaten an entire file cabinet, evidently to get enough mass to turn herself into a mouse-woman. “What, uh, what did you eat to transform into what you are now?”

She looked away, ears back, and remained silent.

“Uh, I hope you’re not going to say you ate a human.” He laughed uneasily.

She didn’t turn to face him. “She was going to send me to a place I know would have hurt me. More than one of us has died there.”

He stared at her. He not only had stolen property, he had a murderer. Okay, if she was telling the truth, she killed in self-defense, although from the company’s perspective—and the law’s—a product killing a worker to stop itself from being used would…well, would just be killed. God. He didn’t even know how to feel about this. Should he view her as a monster, or as a victim who fought back? He was inclined toward the latter, but how much of that was just because she was cute? That poor lab tech had just been doing her job. But if she’d been able to go through with it, the mouse would be on her way to some place that would torture and quite possibly kill her.

But the claim was still incredible. “How…uh…how could you do that when you were still mouse-sized?”

She looked back at him warily, and took a few seconds to answer. “If there is something I can consume that way here, I can show you.”

He blinked twice, then looked around. Wait. He’d never liked that creepy porcelain clown his aunt had inexplicably given him three birthdays ago, but it was still in the back of the pantry, wasn’t it. Okay. He found it and brought it to her.

She took it in both hands, studying it curiously as she turned it around slowly. “I think this is small enough relative to me that I could just swallow it with my mouth.”

“It’s almost two feet high and you’re only about five and a half feet, I’d guess. Are there other ways to swallow?”

“Yes.” She brought it up to her muzzle and gave it a slow lick, then made a face. “It does not taste very good.”

That was a weirdly alluring lick. “I wouldn’t think so.”

She pressed the porcelain clown doll to her chest in a hug with both hands, then jerked, arching her back into the figurine and throwing her head back. The fur around the doll shimmered, as if lit by a light source inside her, and the figurine disappeared into her with a soft sizzling sound.

Ted stared. “Holy shit.”

As it vanished completely, her muzzle opened, and she let out a little moan, as if the experience was…ah…he decided on “sensual” for his sanity’s sake.

Then she took a deep breath. “I did that.”

“Oh.” He swallowed and smiled weakly. “I’ll do my best not to piss you off. Please don’t eat me.”

She shook her head, wide-eyed. “No! I will keep you safe, Ted.”

That sounded simultaneously comforting and concerning. He cleared his throat. “I was going to just reheat some pork fried rice for dinner because it’s quick. I guess you’ve, uh, already eaten.”

“I would very much like to try some.”

He smiled, a little nervously. “Okay. Let’s do it.” He pulled the carton out of the refrigerator and got out a saucepan, the mouse watching attentively.