Page 6 of Gravel and Grit

Just as he was about to walk out the door, he paused with his clawed hand on the knob, then abruptly spun on his heel. Going back to the kitchen, he raided his cabinets, gathering every piece of candy he could find.

“Not leaving my damn snacks behind to be stolen by that thieving raccoon. Not today, you sly, pilfering, sneaky little… ” he grumbled under his breath, coming up with every insulting name he could think of, remembering the time George, the infernal raccoon that had been creeping around his place for the last three months, had bitten the shit out of his tail when he’d tried to pet it a few weeks ago.

“And to think I even tried to share my food with that ungrateful, rude…

fluffy, adorable… ” he trailed off.

Halting in his search for sweets, Zaek glanced up and stared accusingly at the wall, as if it were at fault for the image that had just popped into his mind of George starving and alone, outside in the cold with no snacks.

“That was damned underhanded, you traitor,” he growled.

Letting out a huff of resignation, he grabbed another bag, transferred two handfuls of treats into it, then snatched up a blanket off the back of his couch, as he stomped back to the foyer and left, locking up behind him.

Making a quick stop at the start of the treeline beside his house, he laid out the blanket, arranging it into a cozy little nest, then emptied the second bag of candy in the middle. Zaek straightened and glanced into the forest, immediately spotting the masked face of his feral foe peeking out from behind a trunk.

Biting back the sad smile that tried to curl his lips against his will, he turned and took to the air, leaving behind his house, his belongings, and his nip-happy friend.

“Damned wind making my eyes water… ”

4

MIRA

The voice that sounded over the intercom in the lab, telling everyone to gather in conference room three, was exactly what Mira had been dreading for the last week. It was time for the department meeting, and she wasn’t ready.

Despite the device’s sudden activity, and all the extra hours she’d put in trying to uncover its secrets, shestilldidn’t know the purpose of the stupid, obstinate thing. Just when she thought she had an idea, she discovered some new code pointing her in a different direction.

First, she thought it was a communication device, then some kind of transportation machine—though, how the two-foot-by-two-foot disk would transport anyone anywhere she didn’t know. She’d checked for every possible mode she could think of that it might use to move people or objects from point A to point B, even going so far as to see if it might be able to dematerialize and rematerialize matter.

She’d actually made some headway in that direction, had begun to believe it might be capable of actual teleportation, before it scared the life out of her by beeping, which is when she discovered some code that pointed to it being a tracker or location device.

After swiftly disconnecting every wire, sensor, and probe attached to it, she’d stared at it in white-knuckled anticipation, with her heart in her throat, waiting to see if it beeped again. If it did, she would have no choice but to sound the alarm. That would send the entire base into lockdown and put

security on high alert, but Mira wasn’t stubborn or foolish enough to put herself and her colleagues in danger just to advance her career.

Thankfully, to her relief—and a little secret disappointment—it didn’t.

But, that meant she spent the final two days before the meeting trying and failing, yet again, to find out why it beeped in the first place. This also meant she didn’t have any definitive evidence or findings to present, just a bunch of theories and the half-identified code that prompted those theories. It wasn’t enough to guarantee she’d be kept on the project and damn sure not enough to get her promoted to a bigger one.

“Just keep your head down and be vague. If I can get through this meeting I’ll have another week to discern what it’s capable of, andthenI can present my findings and finally be taken seriously around here,” she whispered to herself as she gathered a notebook and a stack of random files, just so she wasn’t walking into the meeting suspiciously empty handed.

“Talking to yourself again, Mira?” came a mocking, nasally voice from behind her.

Yelping sharply in surprise, Mira spun and, purely out of reflex, threw the notebook she’d been holding at the person who’d just scared at least five years off her life.

Unfortunately, she had good aim.

It hit her team leader, Calvin, square in the face, making him cry out and stumble back, his own stack of files flying everywhere as he flailed his arms about, trying to defend himself from the unexpected attack.

Mira snorted a laugh at his uncoordinated flapping, but quickly turned it into a cough when he whipped an outraged look at her, his watery-blue eyes wide with indignation behind his rimless glasses.

“Sorry about that, Calvin. But you really shouldn’t sneak up on people,”

she chastised mildly, then added under her breath, “or eavesdrop like a creeper.”

Mira bent to retrieve her weaponized notebook while he gathered his scattered files. Exiting the lab, they walked together through the wide, brightly-lit, winding halls to conference room three in silence.

Mira was focused on repeating her earlier pep talk in her head while Calvin was attempting to give her the cold shoulder for throwing something at his face. The snub might have been more effective if she liked him or even respected him, or if he had any authority to fire her, but she didn’t, and he didn’t, so she was more than okay at not having to endure his thinly-veiled

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