Dear, dear readers who waited patiently for this update; thank you for sticking with me! I am very sorry for the long delay. More on the challenges of writing world-building AU in the after-notes if you are interested.
Slightly different warnings than usual. No sex. Horror and not too graphic depiction of mass death and gore. Surprisingly moderate angst and Dark!Katze. I'm saving this for future chapters.
It began discreetly enough, an untimely Pet death in a low-level brothel. The first one was so unimportant that it didn't even get reported. Pets were disposable.
The next three or four deaths went unnoticed too. An incident in which six seemingly healthy Pets collapsed within minutes of each other in the lobby of a pleasure house was brought to Katze's notice. The angry owner was convinced that it was some form of sabotage from a rival, and his in-laws were powerful enough that Katze was forced to intervene for fear of an escalating gang-war. A well placed wad of compensatory cash and cold reassurance that the matter would be investigated sufficed to calm the indignant pimp.
Then, that very evening, close to a dozen Pets convulsed in transport from one facility to the next. The stench when the closed van doors opened was bad enough that even the grizzled driver backed away in horror.
Calmly surveying the scene before gesturing the white-suit clad minions to begin disposal, Katze felt a cold chill in his bones, a tendril of dread.
He had no reason to suspect the chauffeur, an experienced hard-working man who had never created problems before. This was not normal. This was targeted violence. Katze lit a cigarette, frowning. By who? And to what end? More agressive inquiry was needed, and a quick message was sent to Iason.
Katze had barely returned to his car when a third report chimed in, this time of an estimated ten dead Pets in the cafeteria of a luxury establishment. All cameras and witnesses gave identical reports.
Seemingly normal Pets, laughing and flirting, suddenly froze, glassy-eyed and looking absent. A minute or so later, their eyes rolled up into their sockets and the Pets fell backwards, shaking with convulsions that grew more and more agitated, until they frothed at the mouth, soiled themselves and within fifteen minutes were dead. Some vomited blood, some clutched their stomachs, a few ran around inexplicably upright, bashing into walls and furniture before dying. These were trivial details and Katze immediately dismissed them, sharpening his thoughts to isolate the important facts.
Three constants remained.
The victims were all seemingly healthy.
They all died within minutes.
And they were all Pets.
...
Iason received a second message, and he launched a moderate security alert until more was known of the threat.
Later, Katze would wonder if more could have been done at this early stage to prevent the epidemic. He didn't think so. The information they possessed was too sparse to predict the catastrophe that was about to begin. Like a gentle stirring breeze, the first cases were hardly noticeable. It was only when the gales were stronger that they really began to cause alarm, and by then it was too late. A turbulent cyclone of violence and change was about to rip through the planet.
...
In the next few days, chaos descended on Jupiter's neatly ordered world.
Any area where multiple pure-bred Pets assembled might be hit. Once a victim was announced, it was a matter of hours before the rest of the Pets in the area succumbed. Katze ruled out poison as cause-of-death. Some kind of virus then, biological warfare.
The security alert level was risen accordingly.
Katze's vast numbers of gang members and his myriad workers in every domain were coerced into action, helping to euthanize the affected along with the City Guard.
It was horrible, disgusting work. And it never ended.
There were too many eclosion sites and not enough men. Not to mention the emotional toll. Pets in every sphere of society were dying en-masse, sometimes causing surprising anguish in their owners; yet another unexpected complication to be managed.
Katze was exhausted, trying to coordinate extinguishing efforts as well as find possible leads to the cause of the outbreak.
A day passed, another. Katze snatched a short nap, relying on coffee and nerves to keep awake.
A planet-wide curfew was instituted, the Guards patrolling the streets in clunking knots.
Katze was forced to help his crew finish the job when one of Amoia's largest pleasure houses was struck and it did nothing to improve his state of mind. He arrived on-scene to investigate but the utter chaos and necessity forced him to action. Two of his men were escorted past him in the narrow hallway, eyes glittery and dark with panic-induced catatony.
Fuck.
Katze determined that he had to participate. He could simply order his men into what was more a grisly horror scene than a battlefield, but it was just wrong. A leader had no right to spare himself. Katze had never shied from leg-work, and he steeled himself to become involved now.
Katze had killed before. But this... This turned his stomach. It was a simple matter of plunging the compressed-air syringe into any exposed large muscle that quivered, then pressing the release. A deadly dose of whatever the medics had put in the capsules... And the shaking, grunting, disgusting dying Pet agony ended in a groaning breath, blessed sudden limpness. Then it was simply reload, move to the next, inject, repeat.
This was slaughter.
Katze's shoes squelched in puddles of waste and once a writhing female managed to grasp onto his ankle and cling. It had taken all his self-control to suppress the surge of panic and do his job.
Katze thought he might never again feel clean, after hours of this. His nostrils felt both numb with the stench and at the same time permanently engraved with it. Nausea lingered, a tight knot in his throat that wouldn't go, no matter how he swallowed.
And Katze already knew nigtmares would soon haunt his nights. Great. Just great. He already slept like shit and now he was going to haunted by the too many many vacant stares of the Pets he'd killed.
Katze felt strangely detached from the internal anxiety, from the endless, wordless scream of repulsion at his core. He didn't think that sense of not really being present was a good thing, psychologically. Yet it was the only thing that kept him going. It was easy enough to focus on the repetitive actions.
Load.
Bend.
Inject.
Breathe.
Next one.
Load.
Bend.
It was tough on the teams. Katze made sure to install short fifteen minute shifts, alternating the workers in and out of a refreshment room set up with soothing music, coffee and donuts; a bubble of fake normalcy. He did not allow himself the luxury of rest though.
He just wanted, needed, the job done.
Load.
Think later.
Bend.
Don't notice the details, the hair-color or sex. Don't.
Inject.
Thirty-two. Counting was futile, grim, yet Katze couldn't stop his mind from automatically ticking off the number.
Next one.
It was for their good.
They were doomed, all doomed.
...
Raoul spotted the familiar red-headed silhouette from across the hallway. Fuck. He noted the pinched look, the determined set of eyes that stared at the floor, the faint tremor in long limbs even if the delicate hands were dead steady. Raoul watched from afar as a pale Katze quickly exterminated two Pets before heading deeper into the room. The place was draped in luscious jewel-toned velvets and gold accents, meant to stimulate the senses with a mysterious erotic atmosphere. The luxurious setting, however, was turned into a discordant parody of itself now that it was illuminated in the harsh glow of emergency lights, completely erasing the shadows that tastefully blurred the edges.
Bad. This was bad. Raoul didn't, couldn't, feel anything for the Pets, mostly a vague distate at the mess their dying made.
Seeing Katze affected, however...
Raoul's chest felt tight; Katze was pushing himself over his limits, doing irreparable damage to himself no doubt, but the Doctor couldn't really do anything to help him. Not now, surrounded by carnage and too many many people. God he wanted to hold Katze, reassure him somehow that they would make it through.
Raoul couldn't. He couldn't.
He didn't dare. That made it worse, somehow.
Shaking away the feelings, the guilt, Raoul opened his case and readied himself to collect samples.
...
Katze stumbled onto Raoul in a dark lounge area, and it was like a glittering sword driving straight through the numbness.
The tall Blondie was crouched next to a victim, drawing blood. His robot fingers were making accidental bruises on a shaking arm, holding it still for the needle. It didn't matter. The Pet would soon be dead anyway. Raoul was dressed in a shiny white haz-mat suit and even in the midst of this hell, his hair gleamed like burnished gold.
Katze swallowed down the impulse to bury his face in it, hold tight and fill his lungs with cool Blondie smell.
Raoul shone like an angel in Katze's nightmare.
It actually hurt Katze, made his heart ache and his breath catch, just seeing him.
Raoul looked up at him, and his eyes were liquid-kind, even if his face was Blondie-expressionless. Suddenly, Katze was choking, choking, overwhelmed.
He flipped around and blindly fled, cursing himself; cursing Raoul for breaking through the blankness. Outside, the day was a brilliant sunny blue, the sky filled with mockingly perfect fluffy clouds.
Katze leaned against a cold wall, pulling out a cigarette. The paper stained a watery pink where his black gloves touched it, and the sight revolted Katze.
Stumbling into a nearby alley, he vomited a burning rush of liquid, tugging frantically at his soiled leather gloves even as he retched as quietly as he could.
Bent in half, he braced himself against the wall as tremors slithered up his back. Breathing hard, Katze finally managed to remove the gloves and dump them. Wiping tears from his cheeks, Katze waited for the weak, watery feeling to leave his legs before he straightened.
Okay.
Better.
The purge had left him feeling more level-headed.
Raoul was waiting for him at the front of the building, standing straight and gorgeous as ever. He handed Katze disinfectant wipes, watching as Katze abrasively scrubbed his fingers, then his face. Never clean. Never ever clean again.
Finally, Katze lit a cigarette. There were very little words exchanged between the two men.
Raoul admitted that they were probably looking at a virus of some sort, although how it spread and why Pets were targeted were still unknown variables. Katze already knew all this.
"This is just the start, then." Katze's voice sounded hoarse, probably because of the vomitting.
Raoul nodded solemnly.
"The situation will likely get worse soon." he predicted.
Katze should have felt dread, but mostly he was comforted by his brief respite in Raoul's company.
...
That evening, Jupiter declared martial law.
...
It was too late.
...
Raoul disappeared into his labs. Iason and Syndicate held several emergency meetings, debating on necessary laws; finally they ordered the closing of all shops and businesses despite the effects such actions had on the economy. Katze had a possible lead on an underground medical lab that had partially exploded.
He never got to investigate it, though, because in the next days, the epidemic grew exponentially, spreading death among Pets and fear among citizens. Another vital aspect soon became clear; the affected Pets all had pure-bred lineage.
It was chilling, since virtually all Pets stemmed from tank-breeding.
Katze barely had time to ponder the far-reaching effects on society of the genocide of all Pets. Because on day four, the first non-Pet victims began.
...
It seemed that the more genetically-altered a lineage was, the higher the likeness of contagion. Raoul muttered explanations about a specific weakness, a minor mitochondrial anomaly that inevitably resulted when DNA was tweaked. The fact had been brought to Jupiter's knowledge in the early days of the colony, duly studied and classified as irrelevant. From what Katze understood, it was as though the virus ate away at a specific link in a chain. Ensure the same damage in enough areas and multiple organ failure leading to death resulted. Even if Katze's comprehension of the exact biology was limited, it's effects were obvious enough.
Death.
So much death.
The magnitude of it was incomprehensible.
Professors, merchants, diplomats. Ordinary workers and some Furniture. Entire castes were being wiped out.
People were ordered to barricade themselves in their homes. Guards patrolled the streets, protected by their filtering head-gear. Anyone caught outside was arrested and placed into quarantine. Panic seemed to permeate the eerily quiet streets, the faint echo of wailing behind closed doors barely filtering into Katze's consciousness. Unless that was his own despair, shrieking inside his skull.
A day passed, night bringing no sleep again. A few mobs were quickly quelled. Victims of the virus, often not dead yet, were being thrown from the high-rise windows as soon as symptoms began. Maintenance robots barely managed to keep the streets cleared of organic debris, and fluid stains marked the places were the bodies had landed.
Vid-conference after vid-conference provided no solution for Iason. He was thin-lipped and cold-eyed, organizing automated factories to produce the soon-to-be necessary protein rations. The real problem would be how to distribute the food to the quarantined citizens. Hourly updates on the epidemic were broadcast, as well as various staged interviews with eminent professionals who assured viewers the situation was well under control. It was a lie.
Though Iason worked endlessly, spending exhausting hours directly linked to an irrate Jupiter, he knew he did not hold the cure. The future of the planet rested on Raoul.
Two more surreal days passed.
Blondies, with their android bodies, seemed immune to the illness. However, there were too few Blondies to imagine them distributing the necessary food to the populace even if he'd been able to convince them to aid. The problem of potential starvation was growing pressing.
Iason worried for Riki; two Syndicate members so far had informed him of their personal Pet's demise.
Iason heaved a quiet sigh of relief when it became obvious that, like Blondies, mongrels were immune to the infection. Raoul indicated it must be due to unregulated cross-breeding and their highly muddled genetics. Iason was immensely relieved, since both Katze and Riki were mixed-breed.
And speaking of mongrels, by day seven they were becoming a problem. Rising violence and increasing clashes with guards resulted in deaths on both sides. As Katze shortly summed up, the slums were not capable of producing sufficient nourishment for the wild mongrels inhabiting it. Normally, stealing from Eos and Midas spurred a thriving illegal trade, ensuring the survival of the inhabitants of Ceres. However, with the planet in lock-down, the mongrels would die of hunger even if the virus spared them.
What a wreck.
It was Katze who suggested that they exploit their ressources. Mongrels were desperate for food, as were the baricaded citizens. Food that waited in abundance in warehouses, lined up in gleaming packaged pallets. Katze's crafty mind evaluated that the only way to save everyone was to employ the mongrels to distribute the rations.
It was brilliant, really, and Iason hardly needed much maneuvering at all to convince a desperate Syndicate.
Katze, bright-eyed and sharp depite the dark circles and shallow look to his face that spoke of how little sleep he'd been getting, set up a string of meetings with the most influential mongrel gang leaders. Riki the Dark joined him, a steadying if sarcastic companion.
The terms they offered were simple.
Distribute food in exchange for their own rations.
Iason had intially wanted to insert a sub-cutaneous tracker in the mongrels before granting them access to the city, but Riki had opposed him and won. The mongrels instead received a poly-glued chip they might remove if they wished, although doing so would confine them to the slums. The gangs were also each attributed a colored armband.
Each group was assigned to a specific neighborhood, identified on the map in the color matching their armbands. Boxes of rations were then distributed door to door, after which the mongrels were given their own portions.
It was the best plan the Council could come up with on such short notice. That they even contemplated using mongrels spoke of how dire the situation was.
The first days of the arrangement were intensely supervised by the Guards, but proved mostly uneventful.
A few fights broke out; anyone involved was dumped out of the city unceremoniously. A few citizens were robbed, and in one case held hostage, resulting in the shooting death of the whole group of mongrels responsible. A little extreme, maybe, with no trial, no-one to listen to their arguments. Once the camera's footage confirmed the crime, the gang was executed. It was an exemplary sentence; this was martial law. It certainly caused the other mongrel packs to think twice before acting out.
It was barely organized chaos. There were no required hours, no pay-checks. It was deliberately simple. Just insure that your sector was fed, however the mongrel leaders wanted to do it.
And miraculously, it worked.
Katze's lips curled into his secretive smile, watching from the shadows as a teary mother gratefully accepted sustenance from beings that she would normally have spit upon.
Jupiter was pleased. The number of dying was stabilizing, due to isolation.
Surprisingly, after initial wariness and considerable arrogance, the mongrels behaved on the whole pretty well. When the public baths were opened to the mongrels who went over their distribution quota, they were met with mild interest. The permission to race on the wide stretch of empty public highway, however, was a great motivator.
It took close to four days for Raoul to announce the creation of a vaccine, and another six for it to be generated in suficient amounts.
Then, it was like watching a wave swell. Medical personnel, Katze's men, and squadrons of City guards were innoculated first. The following day, the newly immune ventured out to help inject others. Within three days, the number of those protected was enough to offer a semblance of mass protection and clinics were opened, long lines of fearful and dazed citizens winding far down the street. Gradually, the numbers of anxiously non-vaccinated people dwindled, until in another week, the campaign was deemed a success.
The epidemic was over.
...
It was hardly a time for celebration though.
...
Jupiter's carefully ordered society was thrown into turmoil. The hierarchy that had kept the city running now had to contend with some serious chunks removed. More than 83% of Pets had been exterminated. Every other caste was reeling, key members or entire families just gone. Public workers, business men, entrepreneurs, teachers. Every person of authority in the city was scrabbling to figure out how to keep things running while reeling from this sudden confrontation with their own mortality. No-one was free from grief, having lost friends, family and coworkers.
Trust in Jupiter was shaken, the AI's infallibilty questionned. Most crucially, attitudes towards mongrels had changed.
Suddenly, this great mass of mostly young and fit men seemed like a waste, shunned because of their ancestor's actions. It was illogical to let them drink their lives away right at the doors of a city that sorely needed more workers.
The Syndicate approved a temporary edict to allow mongrels who desired it to be implanted with an identity chip and become part of a new free-worker caste.
Jupiter was less than enthused, grudgingly refusing to reintegrate the children of rebels. However, with 40% of it's citizens suddenly gone, the logic was difficult to refute. Jupiter's suddenly shaky leadership satus would not survive opposing the only choice that might keep the economy from crashing. Probabilities indicated that full-out civil war would likely result from a refusal, so Jupiter approved the by-law.
Individual free-worker contracts were drawn by the employer. Some offered money. Others proposed lodging or education bonuses. The success rate of the program was difficult to evaluate. Parts of the mongrel population were so embeded in their lazy habit of drinking and drugs that they showed no interest in work. However, some of the more ambitious mongrels did take the offer. And there were clear cases where both the individual and the company profited greatly from the arrangement. There was a protest by disgruntled Furniture and an alteration to the text was added to permit Furniture to apply for free-worker status after a mandatory ten-year service.
Most importantly, though, the integration program provided something that had been sorely lacking in the slums; hope. Hope that through work and intelligence, a mongrel might improve their lot in life if they so chose.
...
The epidemic was over... Officially.
Jupiter's world was re-opened to inter-planetary trade. There was much head-shaking and sympathy from all manner of alien contacts. The going price for even the most basic Pet rose exponentially. Interest in the vaccine proved just as lucrative.
Officially, the epidemic was over.
However, as Iason noted, on a personal level, the impacts of the epidemic scarred each and every individual.
Selfishly, Iason was pleased that Riki seemed to suffer little. Perhaps that was because he had been so far removed from regular life as most citizens viewed it. Riki lived in a glass bubble forged by Iason, and for once his unsual situation had a positive impact.
Katze, however...
Katze had once more proved Iason's long-ago evaluation of his value. He had been a formidable ally during the crisis. And yet, Iason worried.
Something had broken in Katze. There was a ragged, weary edge to his impeccable posture. He was too polite, and he didn't eat enough. He fidgeted with his scar more, as if his skin had somehow drawn tighter. His amber eyes were dark, dark, and sometimes there were brief flashes when his guard dropped that made Iason's teeth grind.
This wouldn't do.
Iason ordered Katze to share his bed with Riki, which at least improved the dark shadows under the red-head's eyes. But Iason couldn't really help Katze. Not how he needed it.
...
Raoul was terribly over-worked, what with the demand for new Pets, stabilizing the vaccine for intergalactic transport and quickly alterring a device for cerebral modulation to help blur the horrible memories for those who couldn't function. Better to meld memories of the epidemic into a hazy dream, erasing the fear and grief associated with it, than to allow great numbers of the populace to wallow in trauma.
Katze knew of the procedure, of course. He did not take it.
Iason couldn't bring himself to order him to, even if Katze would have benefitted from it.
Instead, Iason waited a few weeks. Nothing changed. Katze was wasting away.
Iason did not like admitting failure. However, it was obvious he was losing. Losing Katze. Iason couldn't simply order Katze to eat and sleep and heal.
The First One's fingers were steady as he sent the much-needed text.
"Raoul."
Iason's pink mouth pressed together tightly. Yes. He knew what needed to be done.
"Katze needs you." He typed.
Satisfied, the ice Blondie steepled his fingers under his chin. Katze had been Iason's for over a decade. Now, Iason would relinquish his hold on his faithful servant. Iason couldn't help him.
He was certain Raoul could.
Standing, Iason flicked the lights in his office off with a hand-wave.
Riki was waiting for him.
My, this story was a challenge. I couldn't get the POV right. I normally take great liberties with POV, letting it switch between each character. Well this time, no-one wanted it! I tried Katze but he was too angsty and post-traumatic. Riki didn't care enough, Iason flipped me off. And Raoul, well Raoul created a whole NEW twist you will learn about soon enough. So, introducing a new voice, rather colder and more omniscient than the others.
Also, I am stuck between three endings now. Like a three-fold path, this story can end either happily, hopeful for happy or down-right dark. And each possibility feels just as right. So I have finally decided to post this bit, then next time I'll just throw all three endings at you guys.
xxx
FrenchCaresse