Mus Numena 6: Aurora (Patreon)

When the phone’s alarm music blared at six, it startled Ted in a way that rarely happened. It wasn’t as if he’d gone to bed unusually late. If anything, he’d gone to bed early, after setting up the couch with sheets and a pillow for the mouse woman—and explaining how beds worked to her.

As he’d fallen asleep, he’d half-expected to have disquieting dreams about mice-people, but if he’d had any he didn’t remember them. Insted, he’d slept as hard as possible to avoid facing the obvious: now, what the fuck?

Getting up, he kicked off his typical routine, heading to the bathroom and on out to the kitchen in his boxers. He didn’t consider the implications of that until he woke up the mouse woman. Her big ears flicked drowsily, and she sat up, stretching lithely with a wide, cute yawn. Her silver fur glittered in the sunlight streaming through the gaps in the blinds. God, she’s attractive crashed down over him harder than any time he could remember, possibly for any woman, ever. Ted would have denied being a furry even yesterday—at most, he’d have admitted occasionally being furry-curious—but, holy hand grenades.

“Hello,” she said, smiling and rubbing her eyes.

“Ah.” He stood behind the kitchen counter, trying desperately to conjure the feeling of a cold shower. “Good morning. Do you, uh, have you ever had coffee?”

She shook her head.

“Would you like to try a cup? I know from last night, you can taste things you eat, uh, normally.” She’d been extremely enthusiastic about the fried rice—one might say lasciviously enthusiastic. The image of her licking the fork clean came back and that was the exact opposite of the feeling of a cold shower, wasn’t it.

She pushed the sheet aside and nodded, smiling. “I would.”

As he spooned ground coffee into the brewer and flicked it on, she walked toward him, and he tensed up. But she turned, walking into the bathroom instead. He let out a silent sigh of relief. Describing to her how to use the toilet had been awkward—for him, not for her, since as far as he could tell she had no sense of embarrassment about anything.

By the time she came out, he’d poured two cups of coffee and pulled on a pair of shorts that were less…revealing of his inner thoughts.

He handed her the cup. “It might be bitter. You can add sugar or milk to it, although I don’t add it to mine.”

She took a sniff, nose wiggling, and took a sip. That instantly elicited a choking noise and a grimace.

He tried not to laugh. “Add a spoonful or two of sugar to it.” He got the sugar bowl down and did it for her, stirring it in. “Try now?”

She took another sip. Her expression remained dubious, but she nodded. “That is better.”

“Good.” He tilted his head. “You know, your voice sounds different today.”

“I tried to change my…” She touched her fingers to her throat. “Vocal cords? To be more humanlike. Does it sound better?”

“It’s smoother. But it still sounds like you. That’s good.” He sat down at the small kitchen table.

She sat down across from him. “I think I want the name ‘Aurora’.”

He tilted his head. “It’s a lovely name.” He stopped himself from following that up with anything about her being lovely. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. (Or the right idea.)

“The Aurora Borealis is lovely. In pictures. Maybe someday I’ll see it.”

“That sounds wonderful. I never have.” He sighed, looking into his coffee cup. “So. I don’t know what to do now. To help you, I mean. I don’t know if I should even go into work today, right? On the one hand, I don’t want to leave you alone and act as if everything’s normal. On the other, if the office is in lockdown mode because one of their incredibly expensive lab mice has gone missing, staying home might make me a suspect.” He grunted. “Who am I kidding. More even more of a suspect than I already am.”

“Suspect?”

“In stealing you.”

“Stealing?” Her eyes grew unfocused. He could all but see her plugging into the network somehow, searching for terms that help let her understand context. After several long seconds passed, she focused on him again, eyes getting wider. “I am property.”

“I’m… I don’t think you should be, but legally, yeah, you are. You, uh, you understand that your kind is sold as lab animals. For…” He swallowed. “Experiments. Don’t you?”

That earned him another few seconds of an unfocused gaze, followed by a look of absolute horror. Oh, God, she hadn’t known, somehow, had she. The blood drained out of his face.

“How could you?” she whispered.

“They don’t…they don’t think you’re people.”

“Do you?”

“Yes!” He hadn’t expected his own level of conviction. But he meant it. “Yes. I don’t understand how anyone could look at you—could talk to you—and not see that.”

“Then you can just show them?”

He scratched the side of his head. “It’d be great if it were that easy. I doubt it will be, though.”

“But you said…” She looked confused.

“Humans have an incredible capacity to be disappointing.” He grunted again, leaning back and taking a long sip of coffee. “Aurora, I’m not… I don’t have any real power at the company. I can plead your case, but I can’t guarantee they’re going to listen to me. And what I’m afraid of is that if I show up with you, all that happens is they take you away and arrest me.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know. We need a lawyer, although I have no idea what kind of lawyer.” He set down his mug and rubbed his face. “Maybe I can check email and Slack to see if there’s any buzz about your disappearance there.”

Her eyes stayed on him as he got up and headed to the living room, bringing the laptop back to the kitchen table and opening it. “Okay. Let’s see what we have.”

Aurora got up and looked over his shoulder.

“Um.” Lucy used to do that to him, at least when they were first dating, but it hadn’t been remotely this distracting. “So. Nothing obvious in email. Let’s check Slack.” He scrolled through the few messages that had come in overnight, then stopped. “Uh-oh. There’s a message to everyone about staying out of the way of police activity this morning at HQ.” Ted read it quickly. “A lab technician’s gone missing, and she’s suspected of stealing proprietary company material.”

The mouse straightened up, eyes widening and ears going up, and let out a distinctly dismayed squeak. “Me.”

“Well—”

The beep for a Slack direct message sounded. He opened the panel, then swallowed hard. From Stonebraker, exactly one sentence:

Come see me when you get into the office today.

“Crap.” He looked at Aurora. “If I don’t head in, it’s probably going to raise alarm bells now. Are you okay with staying here alone?”

Her eyes got wide, ears standing up and back. “What if they don’t let you come home? What if they arrest you there, and come here to take me?”

“They don’t have any reason to think I have you, so they don’t have any reason to arrest me.” (Yet.) “I can stay a few minutes late with you, though, try and get you settled. And maybe figure out what kind of lawyer I can call.”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“If I don’t get back into the office sometime, Aurora, I’ll lose my job. And if I don’t go this morning, Stonebraker’s going to be real suspicious.”

She bit her lip—with her pronounced square front teeth, the expression went absolutely weapons-grade cute on her—and nodded.

“Okay. I don’t have much in the way of breakfast food, because I always eat cereal. I can get you a bowl if you’d like.”

“Yes, please.”

He got up and walked back into the kitchen, getting down two bowls and looking in the pantry. Hmm. Grape-Nuts might be too much like mouse kibble. Did they call it kibble? Pellets? Never mind. The Cranberry Almond Crunch.

Filling the bowls and adding milk to each, he set one down in front of her with a spoon, sitting down across from her with his own and pushing the laptop out of the way. “You eat it like this.” He picked up the spoon and scooped a biteful of cereal on it, then lifted the spoon to his mouth. Showing someone how eating utensils worked made him acutely self-conscious, as if she might judge him on his manners.

Aurora studied with the unsettling intensity he’d quickly come to expect from her, and slowly—but perfectly—mimicked his actions, down to slipping the spoon out from between her lips and crunching down on the cereal. Then she did something he definitely hadn’t: her eyes flew open wide, and she let out an ecstatic moan.

“So, uh, you like it.” He tried to ignore the feel of a rising blush in his cheeks.

She nodded, swallowing quickly and licking her lips. “This is amazing!” She poked at the cereal with her spoon, examining a cranberry, then an almond, then a…a crunch. “You still have the best treats.” She took another spoonful, looking absolutely blissful.

Someone knocked on the front door. Both Ted and Aurora looked over.

Another knock sounded. “Mr. Bishop?” a gruff voice called. He didn’t recognize it. Before he responded, it spoke more loudly. “Ted Bishop?”

The mouse looked at him, alarmed again. He stood up, as quietly as he could. Something was off. “Hide,” he whispered to Aurora, and motioned for her to follow him toward the bedroom.

 “Okay,” another voice said, more conversationally. “Go ahead.” Keys jangled outside the door. What the hell?

He opened the closet and pointed inside, grabbing a jacket with his other hand. “If you can make yourself look like a lamp or something…”

She gave him a puzzled look, but stepped inside, sliding the door shut.

“I’ll let you know—”

The front door opened. He turned, and headed out of the bedroom as if he were walking out after picking up the jacket.

Two uniformed police offers stood there, along with somebody who must be one of the leasing office’s agents. Ted couldn’t be sure because they seemed to turn over every six months, but he held a set of keys.

“Mr. Bishop,” one of the policemen said, looking startled. “We have a search warrant. Stand over here.” He turned to the leasing agent. “Leave.”

The agent nodded, hurrying away.

Ted furrowed his brow, doing his best to act confused. It wasn’t entirely an act. “A search warrant for what?”

“Stand over here,” the cop repeated, holding out a folded piece of paper.

Ted took the paper, scanning it. A search warrant, all right. Suspicion of theft of company property, specifically one bioengineered mouse.

The second cop said abruptly, “Who else is here, sir?”

“Huh? There’s no one—”

“Two cereal bowls.” He pointed at them as if they were explosive devices, and raised his voice, putting his other hand on his gun. “Who else is here?”

Ted stepped forward. “Look, there’s—”

The first cop grabbed him, spinning him around and slamming him face-first against the nearest wall. His vision flashed momentarily gray, swimming with stars. “I said stand there!” he screamed. “Stop resisting!” He raised his baton threateningly.

Lame but accurate protests like What did I do and I have rights blinked through Ted’s mind, but when he tried to voice one, it came out as a pained wheeze. “Christ,” he managed, turning enough to see the second cop heading toward the bedroom with his gun drawn. “Oh, no, don’t—”

The first cop slammed his baton into Ted’s side. That got Ted to yelp, raising his hands protectively. He slid down the wall as another baton hit came. Ted let out a pained moan. What the fuck? Had this guy just cracked his rib?

“What in God’s name—” the second cop said, at the same time Aurora rocketed out. She barreled into him with enough force to send both of them flying into the wall opposite the bedroom door. Ted was pretty sure the crunch came from plaster rather than bones, but when the cop slid down to the floor he didn’t get up. He looked like he was still breathing. Maybe.

Aurora, for her part, looked completely unfazed and somehow she was now seven feet tall and had claws and fangs and was snarling like a wolf as she came for the cop manhandling Ted.

That officer made the understandable but crucial mistake of gawking. “What the f—” He didn’t get a chance to finish the expletive before the Dynamouse lifted him into air by his throat.

Ted gasped. “Aurora, don’t hurt—”

She froze, claws against his side. No, not claws, literal metal blades, lethal knives at the ends of her fingers.

“He hurt you,” she growled. She dropped the cop back to the floor, though, grabbing his gun in the same motion and crumpling it like a soda can.

Ted gawked, too, and his vision swam again.

“Ted?” Aurora said, voice back to querulous and innocent, worried, but it sounded unnaturally far away. He wasn’t quite conscious of hitting the floor himself.