It had been all I could do to restrain myself from dropping everything and following Felicity’s host and her friend to wherever they were going.

  I’d o reeehow. I o ask her questions, and see if she was OK. And I had not beeain she’d reach out to me again.

  But following her right then and there would have meant a risk to my cover and my source ur food. I’d have left my human friends, my coworkers, out on a limb. And while that retionship could probably have been mended after that, I’d have had to answer questions and manipute their employers to avoid having my at scrutioo closely.

  And every time I do something like that, I risk my life. It’s worth it, but I like to keep it to a minimum.

  So, instead, I’d stayed at my post, watched them tear themselves away from my gaze, a back to work when they’d left.

  And then, ter, I found myself in an impromptu after-shift meeting with Greg, Ayden, and Cassy.

  “You gotta e with us to Shady’s now,” Cassy said. “We’ve got important things to discuss, and you’re part of it.”

  “Yep,” Ayden agreed.

  Greg just nodded.

  The four of us were on the same shift schedule, and so far my story makes it seem like we were at the registers together all the time. But that’s actually pretty rare. These were my work friends, because we had lunch, breaks, and clocked out at the same time. So, the moments we were w ter together stand out and matter. For most of any given day, we’d be spread out around the store (though I always worked a register). And my breaks were covered by someone else on a slightly different shift that overpped with mine.

  In any case, the four of us were getting tight with our camaraderie, and I could see by their eyes and their radiant feelings that they inteo talk seriously about the whole union idea.

  I philosophically approved of the idea, for their sakes, but it worried me. This versation would be full of pitfalls and mines.

  But turning them down would be a problem, too. It'd prompt more difficult versations.

  “OK,” I said. “But if it’s this serious, we should keep the drinking to a minimum. At least for the duration of the heavy talk, please? I don’t mean to be a teetotaler, but I just –”

  “No, that makes sense,” Ayden said.

  “Huh,” Greg grunted.

  “Let’s be sober while we’re talking business,” Ayden said. “Or just one drink in, at most. So we’re not shooting our mouths off, and we’re clear headed about it.”

  “Sounds reasoo me,” Cassy said. “Also, whatever makes you more fortable, Synthia.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Sure,” Greg relented. “I do that. Though, I’m breaking out the Guier.”

  “Oh, that stuff is like water,” Ayden excimed. “An Erdinger Pikantus is a dolr cheaper, way tastier, and has more alcohol per volume.”

  Greg raised an eyebrow at him and just muttered, “Humdinger Pink-a-tush?”

  “Also, the fluted gss has sexy beer-snobby curves,” Ayden added, ign Greg’s s. “You know how you like your curves, Greg. I dare you…”

  “You two, e on,” Cassy admohem, giving me a sisterly ghat silently said, “Boys.”

  I was busy eating this up, but that look snapped me out of my snack, and I said, “Alright, let’s go.”

  Since I didn’t have any money, I nning on just having water. I’d get plenty drunk off of everyone else.

  Shady’s is a lightly Irish themed pub in the basement of a downtowail building, but they pride themselves in their imported sele of beers from all around Europe. The decor is green and e vinyl over dark brown wood with brass trim, mostly. Most of the windows had stained gss, and there were blues and yellows there as well. The floor was carpeted with red and burgundies. And the lighting was famously dim.

  The T.V.s scattered throughout the establishment were stantly showing soccer matches, with the volume turned off and English captions turned on.

  When there was music, it was from a variety of genres, and usually turned low so it was easy to talk over it in quiet tones.

  In the early ‘00s through the ‘10s, there had been a bewildering trend in imbiberies and brewpubs up and down the West coast to have terrible acoustics, iive sound dampening, and the loudest ers regardless of how many were actually in the pce at any given time. Music would be turned up to ence people to talk even louder.

  The owners of Shady’s hated that, and had cultivated an atmosphere that was the opposite but still quite homey.

  Of course, this meant that in order not to be heard by other ers, you had to speak even quieter, so that your voice wouldn’t carry. But that was the point.

  This made Shady’s a favorite adult getaway for the neurodivergent people of a good k of Gresham.

  They had a spacious floor with lots of room between tables, and pretty solid air filtration, too. So an hour or so in there with masks off to enjoy the food and drink was minimally risky for those of us who were human. Not that many people seemed to care about the pandemiymore, not even with another one looming.

  We had a er booth.

  I didn’t have water. Nht away, at least.

  Greg had insisted on buying me a drink si was my first time there, and I’d gone for that Erdinger Pikantus that Ayden had been talking about. Which had sparked a definite emotional response fr, with echoes of amusement from Ayden and Cass.

  As we’d all walked to the pce, we’d talked about union stuff on the way, actually. And Greg had covered most of what he knew about the logistics of joining one and starting a chapter. So, by the time we’d gotten there, we all had a pretty solid idea of what our steps were. Which was mostly to go home and look things up oero learn more. Maybe print some stuff out.

  We’d also talked a little bit about how ma might react, and keeping it mum around the workptil we were ready to do anything. And that was something I could easily do.

  There wasn’t much left to discuss when we finally arrived at the pub, then.

  Which robably good, because I was already feeling buzzed from walking past a couple of tables full of patrons on the way to our booth.

  So, I’d been tricked intur post-shift beer after all.

  It wasn’t so bad.

  So I sat bad ehe ambiand the casual and meaningless versation of my coworkers. If I left early enough, I’d still have plenty of time to recover before our shift. And my main was tthen the bonds of friendship I’d been cultivating.

  But, I also sed the pce for possible dangers. I figured that beio the location, it would make sense for me to look around. And in being new, I o know potential traps and escape routes.

  I asked myself, if I were a teratovore, where would I hide? And I looked directly at those pces.

  I was also in the very er, penned in by my friends, but with a view of the whole dining area. I figured it was better to have eyes on the space, and to be surrounded by withan to have a clear exit that didn’t require jumping or climbing. If anything came for me that meant I had to physically run, the gig would be up anyway. I’d readily climb across the ceiling in front of everyone if anything like Sharky or Croc-face showed itself. And anything being more subtle would have to tend with my friends and human social norms.

  I holy felt pretty safe with that arra, but the habits that had kept me safe since life first figured out the cept of li were not something I could ever drop.

  And the attack at the theater did have me a little on edge, still.

  Ideally, my human disguise was good enough that I wouldn’t even be clocked as food.

  Of course, Felicity had seen me for what I was. After a period of some amount of study, though.

  But if a people eater was in the neighborhood, well… I’d avoid sitting on a toilet for now. And maybe caution everyone here from doing that, too. Though using your own toilet at home might be just as dangerous.

  I didn’t know what to do about that, and so didn’t give it much further thought.

  After a few rounds of versation, Cassy turo me and asked, “So! How are things going with your crush? Did I see her at yister today?”

  I buried my nose in my gss while I took a sip of beer to stall, a mild curiosity e fr and Ayden.

  Then I put my gss down and said, “Things seemed a little off for her today. She was quieter than usual and I didn’t prod. She’ll probably bb about it when she’s ready.”

  Greg stretched his arm out, pushing his Guinness across the table to look at it from a distance, and said, “They usually do.”

  “Isn’t that a fantastic beer?” Ayden asked me.

  I turhe gss, looking at the liquid as it moved, and furrowed my brow, nodding faintly. I have no way of knowing if what I sense whe or drink something is remotely like how any living being experie, even with thousands of millennia of human nguage to try to describe it. But it kind of doesn’t matter, because every human basically has the same problem thanks to neurodiversity. So, I just picked a respohat seemed in character with who Ayden knew Synthia to be, “It’s definitely iing.”

  “I sure think so!”

  Cassy rolled her eyes and sipped her framboise.

  “I really am your token straight guy, aren’t I?” Greg snickered.

  “Token cis het, maybe, but I’m not sure you t as straight, hanging out with us,” Ayden told him.

  “I feel honored,” Greg smirked and lifted up his gss and waited for the rest of us to k it.

  Ayden gnced my way, obviously cheg in on the assumption he’d just implicitly made about me. Between knowing these people well enough and tasting their radiaions as they felt them, I knew what he meant by the look.

  “Oh, I’m not sure I fit under any typical human category of anything, gender or orientation” I said. “Cassy thinks I’m autistic, so that probably covers it, really.”

  Ayden grinned and nodded and held his gss up, followed by Cassy, and then me.

  “To rades!” Greg decred.

  “To rades!” Ayden echoed, heartily.

  “To fellow queerdos, however they identify,” Cassy cheered.

  “To friends,” I said.

  And we ked gsses.

  “Speaking of rades,” Cassy said, leaning forward spiratorially, “want to break illegal pany polid share es with each other? You know, for the sake of future unioiations and all that?”

  “Seems like a good idea to me,” Greg said. “We should know where we each stand.”

  “14.70 an hour,” Ayden volunteered.

  Greg and Cassy both looked at him with sympathetic horror.

  “Shit, man,” Greg muttered. “That’s minimum wage. And you’ve been there lohaher of us.”

  “Yup.”

  “I make 15.”

  “I make 14.90,” Cassy said.

  “Pennies difference,” Ayden shrugged. “And it kinda matches our demographics.”

  “Really?” Cassy asked.

  “Kinda, yeah,” Ayden said.

  Cassy looked at me, and asked, “You? If you’re fortable, it’d be cool to know.”

  I gave her that Steve Martin grimace she’d taught me how to do, and hoped that that would unicate enough that I wouldn’t have to verbally lie or something.

  “Aw, shit,” Ayden muttered, looking right at me.

  From the emotional tension rising at the table, I could tell that that grimace had actually been the wrong move. They all wao know more.

  I shouldn’t have e. I khis dance. I knew better. The reason I typically went out of my way to not take a paycheck was to avoid a paper trail, so I could disappear in an instant. I don’t need material things. I don’t need shelter or food as defined by human society. And so I don’t need a gover record of my identity. And if I manipute a business’ paperwork and puter system to let me be on the clock without any of those things, and I , I do so.

  And when I do have to pick up and disappear, to head to safer climes, when people iigate they get so delightfully bewildered by it. Why would anyone work somewhere without taking a paycheck or stealing anything?

  And, admittedly, sometimes a business will get into huge legal trouble for it, for human traffig or embezzlement, if their schedule gets audited. And I’d feel a teeny tiny little bit of guilt for that if I couldn’t clearly see that the whole system was desigo exploit people anyway.

  Like, the amount of guilt you might feel for stepping on an ant.

  Still, I make friends with ants.

  But anyway, I shouldn’t have goo Shady’s with my coworkers, and I’d known that.

  Just like how I’d teamed up with Felicity to act as her bait, even though that’s usually against my own rules.

  And now I had to decide what to do to get out of it.

  “Now I’ve gotta know,” Greg said. “Is it more or less than the rest of us? Well, it ’t be less than Ayden, of course.”

  “Well –” I started to say, drawing out the word and stalling, when someo aable jumped up with their phone in hand and started cussing.

  “What is it?” one of their panions asked.

  “It’s happening again!”

  To ahey spped their phone down oable and decred, “There’s video of it, too!”

  I felt a chill ripple through my being as everyo that table sobered up and, while collectively leaning forward to glimpse the phone s, bsted the room with arm and horrified curiosity.

  The look on my face must have betrayed the iy of the emotions, because my friends were suddenly looking more ily at me, not the otion at the other table.

  “Synthia, what’s wrong?” Ayden asked.

  Very quietly, “Sell My Soul” by Midnight Oil ying on the pub’s stereo, aween gasps and excmations of the people who were watg the cellphone py a video, the pce was quiet enough I could make out the lyrics.

  Ayden had asked me what was wrong, and I answered that question by staring at that table. I lifted a finger and pointed.

  I wasn’t quite certain what I was ready to tell my friends at the moment, so nodding in that dire served as punctuation on my non-verbal answer.

  Greg lifted his head and raised his voice to ask the other ers, “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “Yeah!” called someone from a third table.

  The person who owhe cell phone looked up and said, “Search for ‘live mota Gresham’. It’s just like what happe the theater. There’s footage of an actual monster oreet, right now.”

  ‘Footage’. An old word still in use by some people. It refers to camera film, which is irrelevant to any video taken by a cellphone. But it sounds cool to say, so some people still use it.

  “Ah, AI garbage,” Greg grumbled. “No need.” Then he said, louder, “Thanks.”

  But Ayden was already looking it up, and when he found it at the top of the search he plu down oable for the rest of us to see.

  “Yeah, look at that,” Greg dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

  Cassy leaned in to get a closer view.

  I could see it clearly from where I was.

  Someone was rec video as they ran. But they weren’t running away from what they were filming. They were keeping their distance, but also keeping up with it, running parallel to the course of a.

  Two people were running very hard, away from something gallumphing across the street.

  And I reized all three subjects.

  theInmara