52 Project #22: Lynx
Her name is… she’s sure she can remember it, if she tries hard enough. It was something that started with a sound she can’t make any more, which lets out all the vowels, and r, and m and n, and s, so… something else. Was it Lisa? Maybe it was Lisa. Or could it have been Laura? It’s so hard to hold her memories in her head.
The people she’s living with gave her a name, since she couldn’t exactly tell them what her name used to be. They call her Athena. This is awfully ironic. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and craft, she can remember that, even if she can’t remember her own name. And now, with her memories shattered and stuffed into a brain vastly smaller than it once was, and all her dexterity gone forever, she has no wisdom and she cannot do crafts.
One of the people she lives with, a woman named Jane, opens the refrigerator. Athena smells delicious food. Ooh, is that a rotisserie chicken in there? If she times this just right, she might be able to grab the chicken and run off with it. The fridge is one of the kind with a pull-out freezer drawer on the bottom, making a convenient ledge for Athena to sit on. She waits until Jane is busy trying to get milk off of the door, and leaps, standing and stretching to grab the chicken, using the shelves of the fridge to keep her erratic balance.
“Athena, what are you doing? You ridiculous cat. Are you trying to get the chicken again?” Jane asks, in the tone of voice humans use to talk to little children and pets, and it grates on Athena’s nerves fiercely. You don’t have to talk to me like that. I understand you! But of course, she has no way of conveying that. At one point she tried to rip keys off a keyboard so she could spell out the truth of what she was, but her cat brain couldn’t handle making sense of the symbols on the keyboard and she wasn’t sure she still knew how to spell anything. What sound did a D make, again? Was it the buh sound or the duh sound?
Jane’s hands push Athena out of the refrigerator, with no chicken, and Athena screams at her in frustration, but it comes out as a cat’s yowl. She’s so tired of eating cat food. There’s only one kind of cat food she finds even remotely palatable, because it’s so bland, so that’s what they feed her… but eating the most boring food in existence because the taste of everything else she might eat instead is just horrible does not thrill her. She wants chicken. And ham. Not fish, she’s so sick of fish. The smell of fish from the super-concentrated cans of wet catfood made from fish has sickened her to the point where she won’t eat fish on a plate either. Beef smells good, but she can’t easily chew it.
There were foods she used to like, once upon a time, that are lost to her now. She remembers loving cake, but she can’t remember what it tasted like, and when she sniffs at cake now, it smells like cardboard. Cats can’t taste sugar. Or smell it, apparently. Rather, she can smell it - she can smell so much, now - but it doesn’t smell good.
“Come on, kitty. Let’s check your bowl,” Jane says, leaving the milk on the counter. She walks over to the cat feeder, which is half full. Athena hadn’t wanted the chicken because she was hungry, she wanted the chicken because she was so goddamn sick of cat food. “No, see, you’ve got plenty of food!” Jane shakes the feeder, making more crunchy bits fall out of the hopper and into the bowl.
Athena gives up. She stalks over to the door and stands up, trying to reach the doorknob. If she just was a slightly longer cat, she might… just… reach…
Jane approaches, and Athena falls down, the effort of being bipedal even with the door to support her overwhelming her. She meows again for good measure.
“Oh, if you can’t get my chicken you want to get out? Okay, fine,” Jane sighs, and opens the door.
Athena sits at the threshold, breathing through her nose, letting all the scents come to her, checking to make sure there are no enemy cats in the area. Humans plainly do not understand this. “Go on, now, you wanted to go out,” Jane says, and touches Athena’s backside lightly with her foot, signaling that if she doesn’t go on her own power, Jane might scoot her out with a foot. It’s not a kick, it’s not painful, but it’s humiliating.
I had a house once, just like you. I had pets. Dogs, not cats. It isn’t that Athena didn’t love cats in her human incarnation; she didn’t have pet cats precisely because she loves cats, and the idea of risking the destruction of a beloved pet’s mind if something went wrong frightened her. The cat she is now was a stray, and she still feels bad about it. Whoever this cat was before Athena rode her that final time, she’s gone forever now, probably.
Well. Time to go dumpster diving… wait, is that Jay?
The gray tabby male approaches her, the comforting scent of him wafting toward her. Athena waves her tail in excitement, and smells Jay’s happiness at seeing her. They sniff at each other’s breath. Ugh, Jay must have gotten into some fish.
As soon as he smelled her breath, Jay paces away from her, then turns back to see if she’s following. Hopefully he isn’t leading her to fish, but Athena is pretty sure Jay knows she hates fish. It’s hard for her to tell what other cats know - her own mind is a human mind stuffed awkwardly into a cat brain, where it doesn’t fit, her cat instincts often confused and jangled by inappropriate human memories. She has no idea what it’s like to think like a real cat. Do cats have enough theory of mind to be able to tell that another cat has a food preference?
But what Jay leads her to was a fast food bag spilled on the ground, with chicken nuggets inside it.
Yes! Athena tears up the chicken nuggets, removing the unappetizing coating and ravaging the meat inside with her teeth. The bag is probably from… oh, no, she can’t have lost that, that name used to be everywhere, what was it… Mike something? Mike Burger? Maybe. Since getting stuck in a cat, Athena’s lost the ability to read logos; something about her limited color vision and maybe about how the cat brain processes information, she isn’t sure.
Afterward, she and Jay walk down the street, inspecting their territory, checking where other cats put down markers. One good thing about this transformation - cat pee only smells bad close up. At a distance, what she’s picking up are the pheromones, which would tell her a lot about the other cats, if only she knew how to interpret it. So far she’s gotten “male”, “female”, “neutered”, “pregnant” and “kitten” from scent, and that’s about it. Jay is probably getting a lot more, but contrary to children’s books, cats do not have a language; Jay can’t convey any really complex information to her any more than she can to a human. They’re friends, but she can’t talk to him.
The part of her that is human, and expects to be able to talk to her friends, is so goddamn lonely.
“Oh, as I live and breathe. Is that - are you Lynx?”
Athena can’t recognize human faces the way a human can anymore, and when she was human she didn’t have the sense of smell that she has now, but the sound of a human voice sounds the same whether she’s a human or a cat. Cats can hear it further away, but it sounds the same.
Before she can control her reaction, she backs up, fur standing on end, and hisses at the speaker. Jay looks at her, at the human she’s hissing at, and bolts - cats don’t stand their ground to defend other cats very often, aside from mothers with kittens. She doesn’t hold it against him.
“Oh!” The human laughs at her. “You look so ridiculous like that! Calm down, we’re no longer enemies.”
Really? Athena thinks at him. Could have fooled me.
Slither, whose name is in no way an accurate representation of his powers, chortles. “Oh, come on now. When you were with a team, and you had your human body anchoring you, you were a threat, but now? You don’t even remember your name, your mind is in complete disarray, and you have no powers beyond the abilities of any house cat. I have nothing against you, now that you’ve been defeated so thoroughly. Does the Watch even know what happened to you or where you are?”
Athena struggles to remember. The Watch. It sounds so familiar.
“Oh, ha! You don’t even remember your own team! This is too rich!” Slither snickers.
A team… yes. Yes, she distantly remembers. Images of men and women in tightly fitting clothing, or cloaks. Friends. She can’t remember any of their names, but she remembers the feelings. The warmth, the feeling of belonging. The joy of fighting by their side. The despair when she realized they thought she was dead, that they won’t even look for her because her body was leaking blood and brains all over the room she should have been safe in and it will never occur to them that she’d survive that. She didn’t know she’d survive that. She always assumed that if she was riding a cat and her body died, she’d die… not stay behind in the cat, forever.
No, wait, that isn’t true. That’s why she never had pet cats, because she was afraid that when she died, she might accidentally jump into one of her own cats. When she rides an animal - rode an animal, she can’t really call what she’s doing now riding - the animal’s own mind would go dormant until she released it, but she always worried that if her body died while she was riding, the animal’s mind would be suppressed forever, effectively dead. She’s tried to find any evidence of the cat who used to live in this body, to no effect. Whoever she was, whatever family may have loved her once, she’s gone now.
But she never told the Watch about her fear - did she? Maybe she did and she just doesn’t remember.
“No, you never told them,” Slither says, and she remembers why he annoys her beyond all the other villains she’s fought. Slither’s a telepath. In the old days, when she was human, he couldn’t read her mind when she was riding - he complained one time it was something about her mind being in two places at once, executing on two different pieces of wetware. Obviously he doesn’t have that limitation any more, or they couldn’t be having this conversation. It’s not the telepathy that makes him annoying, though; it’s how supercilious he is about it. “Ever since Ms. Anthropy killed your human body, the Watch has practically fallen apart.” He puts his hands together next to his cheek and draws his shoulders in, a parody of a little girl over-emoting. “The poor dears! They never recovered from knowing that someone waltzed in through their defenses and killed the friend they thought they were protecting, while they were occupied elsewhere.”
I don’t even remember them, Athena thinks. They’re broken up over what they think was my death, and I can’t even remember them. She thinks she ought to care about this. She ought to be sad, but her cat brain just can’t muster up sorrow for the abstract concept of “people who cared about me once who I don’t remember”.
Slither squats in front of her, which makes it a lot easier to see him, because cat vision isn’t as acute as human. She stares at him with unblinking eyes, because that’s what cats do when they’re angry and proud and they don’t want to back down, and she memorizes what he looks like to her as a cat. He’s a white man, tall and boney, his skin a kind of pale yellow, which is normal for white people; she has a sneaking feeling that it really isn’t, that her human eyes could see and comprehend an entire color range that cats aren’t capable of, but without a human brain to anchor her she can’t imagine what that color could have been. His hair is long, sort of greasy, and he smells like he doesn’t shower very often, which doesn’t bother her as a cat nearly as much as it would have if she were human… after all, she herself never goes near a tub nowadays if she can help it. She remembers that when they were fighting, he used to wear a snake-themed costume; she remembers being surprised when she found out his powers have nothing to do with snakes, and his obnoxious laughter. (Not that they ever actually fought. Athena was immune to Slither’s power when she was riding, but Slither, like all humans, was entirely too big and powerful for a cat’s tiny claws to do much damage to; Athena was never a fighter. It was her job to gather intelligence, and also… something else? There was… something? It slips away from her and she can’t grasp it.)
“You poor, poor thing,” Slither says. “You were a worthy opponent, Lynx; I hate seeing what’s happened to you. You’re losing your mind, aren’t you?”
Losing? I can’t be more cat than I’ve already become; I think what I’ve lost I’ve lost, and everything else is still here.
“Of course you’d think that,” Slither says. “If you were human, constantly being presented with human tasks to do, and you were losing the ability to do them, you’d notice. But you’re a cat. You’re never asked to remember anything, or to do human tasks, so you have no opportunity to notice that your abilities to do so are slipping away.”
How would you know that?
“I checked up on you after Ms. Anthropy killed you, of course.”
Athena doesn’t remember dying. One moment she was in two places at once, processing through two brains at once, lying down in Watch HQ and riding a little tortoiseshell, and the next, she was disoriented and lost, the connection to her human self just gone. She was -
Wait! A flicker! She remembers just a little bit more about the Watch. She remembers slipping into their headquarters, and none of them were there. She went to where her body was, and found her own face unrecognizable, a hole blasted through her skull. It was unmistakably her, though; she’d smelled herself many times when riding cats, and her cat-memories transferred with her from cat to cat even though she hadn’t easily been able to access them as a human.
Athena remembers running, panicking. She should have stayed. She completely forgot that the Watch would care about her and think she was dead; cats don’t think of such things. She just ran.
You knew I was alive, but you didn’t bother to tell anyone else?
Slither shrugs. “I’m a villain, darling, I have no obligation to tell the heroes anything. And if you couldn’t be bothered to tell them yourself…”
I panicked and then I forgot who they were because I’m a cat!
“Details,” Slither says, waving his hand. “But listen. I’m not here to mock you - well, I’m not here just to mock you.” He laughs. “I wanted to make a deal with you.”
Athena gives Slither her best unimpressed look, which she imagines must look really unimpressed, given that she is a cat and they always look unimpressed. Why would I want to make a deal with you?
“Because someone needs to stop the Executive,” Slither says, quietly, very quietly, as if he’s afraid someone might overhear. She’s not sure she’d even be able to hear him if she was human.
Athena’s eyes widen and her tail twitches, her ears stiffening upright and pointing forward. You’re defecting from the Society?
Slither shakes his head. “Oh, no, no. I’m just like Fagin from that musical. You know, ‘Oliver’?” He breaks into song. “‘I'm reviewing the situation, I'm a bad 'un and a bad 'un I shall stay! You'll be seeing no transformation, but it's wrong to be a rogue in ev'ry way.’” He looks down at her. “Oh, come now. My singing’s not that bad.”
I wouldn’t know. Music’s a human thing. I understand the words you said, but it just sounds like you added some nonsense tones to the words.
“Everyone’s a critic,” Slither grouses. And then he speaks in her mind. Executive Dysfunction is out of control. He’s taken advantage of the Watch’s grief and guilt over losing you, and he’s made it far worse - paralyzing them, essentially. I’m sure you don’t watch the news, being a cat, but villains are running rampant, all over the state, and the Watch is barely able to pull themselves together to do anything about it.
Why do you care? Athena asks.
Because my success is contingent on there being a society for me to exploit, Slither replies with a note of mockery, but also more honesty than she expects from him. If there are no rich people, then there are no people I can steal passwords from and wire money to myself. If there is no stock market, there are no tips I can pick up from reading corporate leaders’ minds to make myself wealthy. If society collapses, I’m not going to get to buy anything with my wealth. He sits on the pavement, criss-cross applesauce. I didn’t know the Executive was an anarchist before this, or I’d never have signed up with the Society of Sin.
Athena gives him the unimpressed look again. How did you not know that when you can read minds?
I can’t read the Executive’s. Never could. Just like his power doesn’t work on me.
Executive Dysfunction’s power is to make people confused. That doesn’t sound like such a dangerous and formidable thing, but Athena knows better. In the heat of battle, confusion kills. Confused superheroes strike each other down with friendly fire, harm civilians, destroy property… or just plain fail. A superhero who loses track of what they’re doing in the middle of doing it is not likely to win the day. The Executive’s power never used to work on Athena when she was riding a cat, so she would yowl at her teammates, or nip them, or climb their legs, to break the fog and let them concentrate again. It’s counter-intuitive - you would think a cat yowling at you would break your concentration - but the confusion the Executive inflicts often manifests as the victim hyper-focusing on something useless, or letting their mind drift and keep shifting gears. She experienced it when she was just a human, one time, when she hadn’t found a cat to ride yet. So a swat with a paw or a well-timed kitty screech could break them out of it.
Without her, there might not be anyone left in the Watch who can fight Executive Dysfunction’s power. She still can’t remember who’s in the Watch. She hadn’t remembered either Ms. Anthropy or Executive Dysfunction until Slither mentioned them.
I don’t see what I can do about any of that. I’m a cat. Like you said, my hero days are over. She’s fairly sure she won’t be able to find Watch headquarters even if she tries.
“But you don’t have to stay a cat,” Slither wheedles, speaking aloud again.
Athena’s ears perk and she lifts her head, the picture of a cat who just heard something that alerted her. What are you saying?
“I’m saying that I could facilitate your transfer to a human body.”
If Athena were human, she might have paced, or fidgeted with her hands. The nervous energy drives her to start grooming herself, instead, because she’s a cat and that’s how cats calm themselves. You never had that ability before… did you? Athena didn’t mean to add the last, questioning part, but her command of her own memories is terrible and she knows it, and it makes her second-guess everything she believes about her past.
“My dear Lynx. I named myself Slither and wore snake costumes so people would make assumptions and never guess my true power. Do you seriously believe I’m incapable of hiding some of my full capacities, to keep them in reserve so no one will expect them when I use them?”
That… certainly sounded in character for Slither. That’s all you want me to do? Get my human body back?
Slither nods. “And then tell the Watch you’re alive, of course, and help them fight back against the Society.” He’s whispering again. “With you back to defend them from the Executive, and the grief that’s been dragging them down released, they’ll be able to beat him - he’ll never see it coming. He thinks you’re dead, too. Only I know the truth.”
Why only you?
“Because you were with your team on the battlefield when I could suddenly read you. The moment you sensed you didn’t have your human body anymore, I read it in your mind. And then you ran, but I’ve known since that moment that you were alive in the cat body.” He sighs. “I did think the deterioration of your mind might go a bit slower, though. The fact that you don’t remember any of your best friends that you fought beside for years… you can’t even read logos anymore, you don’t remember the existence of the color red, and what’s worse, your capacity for human problem-solving is fading. You can’t even grab yourself a rotisserie kitchen from a refrigerator.”
Humans are bigger than me and I don’t have thumbs. How am I supposed to open the refrigerator when Jane or someone isn’t there to stop me?
“If you still had a human’s mind, you’d likely be able to come up with six different answers to that question, but cats don’t do very well on problem-solving tasks. Actually, dogs are smarter.”
Athena doesn’t dignify that with an answer.
“How interesting,” Slither murmurs. “You have to actually think in words, like a human, for me to be able to hear you. That’s not your default mode, is it?... Is it getting harder to do?”
Athena has no idea if it’s getting harder to think in words. Did she think in words more when this first happened? Or maybe less? Has she gotten more used to cajoling human patterns out of a cat brain? She hasn’t been paying enough attention to know.
“In any regard,” and now Slither stands up. “I’ve got things to do right now, but I’ll be back tomorrow, around noon. Oh, does noon mean anything to cats? Do you even know what time it is?”
When the sun is in the middle of the sky. I still remember that much.
“Good, then I’m glad I picked noon! I imagine 3 pm would be a lot harder for you to manage.” He chuckles. “We can help each other. You can be human again, I can see a certain colleague taken down before he ruins everything for me, and you’ll be a hero again. Think about it.”
Athena has thought about it and doesn’t see any downside, but there are things Slither probably isn’t telling her, and she can’t get her cat brain to cooperate on imagining what they might be. The emotional punch of you could be human again is overwhelming her limited ability to think, but she has to. Slither always has an angle. His story about wanting Executive Dysfunction defeated makes sense, but she’s a cat. Would she even be able to detect a hole in his story if there was one?
Slither walks away. Athena washes herself for some time, until she’s composed, and heads back to the house, where she meows at the door until Jane’s husband Adam lets her in. Time to eat some shitty cat food and think through… wait, what is she supposed to think through again?
It’s so frustrating to have a cat memory. Things like the location of smells and particularly interesting potential mouseholes and a detailed three-dimensional map of her entire territory stick with her, but sometimes events that happened ten minutes ago fade away and she can only catch them in glimpses.
Racking her brain won’t help. That just makes it worse, most of the time. She eats bland and boring cat food, uses her litter box, and leaps up onto the couch in the living room, stretching out for a nap. It’s then, when her mind is at peace and starting to drop off into sleep, that she remembers. Oh, yeah! Slither! And he said he could get me back into my human body!
Well. Now she can’t afford to go to sleep until she’s mulled the offer over as well as a cat can; if she sleeps before putting in the time to think about Slither’s offer, she’s afraid she’ll forget it completely.
So. Try to use logic. It’s hard, with a cat brain, but she has to try. What could Slither be after, if he’s lying? When she was human, she’d have known, but cats do not have mirror neurons that work to model humans, so she has to drag out memories of being human and cudgel her cat brain into processing them as information.
Slither wants to be rich. He could use his powers to get rich, but he’s a villain. Slither also likes being the smartest guy in the room, but he could get that without being a villain. He likes being secretive and always being one step ahead of everyone else, but he could in theory do that without being a villain, too.
Why is Slither a villain? Why isn’t he a more normal evil person, like a CEO or something, hiding that he has a power rather than letting people think his power is something completely different from what it is? Ms. Anthropy is sadistic and angry and likes to hurt people. Executive Dysfunction is apparently an anarchist. The others in the Society of Sin are all driven by something that makes sense - mad scientists who want to perform unethical experiments and need money and resources to do so; ideologues with bizarre ideologies; there’s the one guy whose name she forgets who just likes to see things burn, metaphorically and literally.
But Slither? Everything she knows he wants is something it would be easier for him to get in some legitimate way. So why is he a villain?
The only answer her cat brain can produce for her is so what?
Okay, try from a different angle. Is there any reason Slither might be lying to her?
Because he thinks it’s fun. Yeah, okay, that could always be Slither’s motive for anything.
Because he doesn’t want to defeat Executive Dysfunction and let the Watch get back together. Okay, but everything he said about why he wants Executive Dysfunction to be defeated makes sense, and if things make sense to a cat, they must be true.
Because… because… oh, this is making her head hurt. She can’t work this out. Why doesn’t she just take the offer, and when she’s in a human body again, then she can figure out what Slither’s real game is?
Making the decision is a relief. Athena stretches, closes her eyes, and relaxes for her nap.
***
At noon the next day, she’s sitting out on the sidewalk, washing her paws to control her nervousness. Cats can’t actually tell time. The sun’s in the top of the sky, but is it really noon, or is it afternoon and she missed the meeting? Or is it an hour or two away from noon, and she’s going to have to wait that long?
“Lynx, such a pleasure to see you!”
Okay. So it really is noon. Nice to know.
I’ll take you up on your offer. You get me back into my body, and I can pull the Watch together and get them to take Executive Dysfunction out.
“Oh, an excellent choice!” Slither claps his hands.
And then he bends down to pick her up. Athena yowls and bolts under a bush. I never said you can touch me!
“Oh, come now. How do you expect us to get to Watch headquarters at the speed a cat can walk?”
I can run a lot faster than you.
“Yes, but I can keep walking when you must stop running. Remember? Humans are persistence predators? Anyway, I’d planned on driving.”
Fine. I’ll go in your car, but you are not to pick me up. I can jump in.
She looks back at the house as she walks after Slither. Jane and her family will never know what happened to their pet cat. Even if the cat body survives and has a cat mind after hers is out of it… the cat won’t know to return to Jane’s house. She’ll become a stray again.
Maybe Athena - no, by then she’ll be Lynx and this cat would be Athena - maybe Lynx will take Athena and bring her back to Jane’s house. She won’t know those people, but she’ll smell her own scent all over the place and recognize this as her home. Jane and the others might perceive her acting strangely, but she’ll be the same cat, physically, and she’ll warm up with the affection they’d give her. And food. Athena would probably like normal cat food, once Lynx isn’t riding her anymore.
Slither opens the passenger door to his car, next to the sidewalk, and Athena jumps up to the seat. Once Slither is in the car’s driver seat, he says mockingly, “Don’t you think you ought to put your seat belt on?”
You’re not funny, Athena thinks at him. Just drive.
***
The Watch HQ is still downtown. Dimly Athena remembers arguments about whether they should move it out of the city - in the city, they could respond to crises more quickly, since those crises almost always happened in the city, but if they were attacked at the HQ there was a high risk of collateral damage and danger to civilians. Looks like they didn’t change it. She can’t remember what her position on it was.
Tell me about the Watch, she thinks to Slither. Remind me who they are.
“Oh, you’ll remember soon enough, don’t you think?” He turns on his cell phone from the hands-free console, and dials a number. A woman’s voice Athena should know, but can’t remember, answers.
“Dr. Awe. What do you want, Slither?”
“It’s go time,” Slither says.
Dr. Awe laughs. “Beautiful. I’ll tell the Executive. You’re on your way?”
“As we speak.”
For a crazed moment Athena considers meowing. Just to hear how Awe reacts, to see what Slither does. Back in the old days, the Society of Sin used to pre-emptively attack cats who were anywhere nearby when they were starting or in the middle of an operation, because no one but Slither could tell if a given cat was her, and Slither, for some reason, never told his fellows. Maybe Slither is a villain because villains get to keep a lot of secrets; it seems to be a thing he does so often, for so little purpose sometimes, that maybe he just really enjoys having information no one else has. Heroes keep secrets also, but she can’t imagine Slither ever wanting to be a hero.
If she meows, Awe’s reaction will tell her if Slither ever told any of his fellows that Lynx was still alive.
On the other hand, it might make it impossible for Slither to do whatever he’s planning that’s going to get her back into her human body. So she doesn’t do it. Slither hangs up the phone.
You’re going to attack the Watch?
“Of course. How else can I put the Executive in a place where the Watch can take him down as soon as they have you to inspire them?” That last bit is definitely mockery. She’s human enough to remember what human vocal tones mean.
I didn’t inspire them. I swatted them with a paw or yowled at them when I could see that Executive Dysfunction was getting to them. Possibly she’ll still be able to do that, even from the cat body; Slither’s power works on her now, without two brains to create too much noise for him to hear her thoughts, but Executive Dysfunction’s power might only work on human brains. She’s never seen him use it on an animal, whereas obviously Slither can.
***
Slither parks the car downtown. This strikes Athena as slightly ridiculous. The Society of Sin has a hovercraft, and a fleet of cargo vans, and a giant robot that can carry them; the fact that Slither drives his own car and parks it some distance from Watch HQ, to rendezvous with his team there, is just silly.
“From this point on you and I have to go our separate ways. I’m sure you remember that most members of the Society will try to kill a cat.”
Athena remembers. Do they know I’m alive?
“They aren’t as certain that you’re dead as the Watch is. I may possibly have dropped some hints, in the past, that shooting you in the head while you were riding a cat wasn’t honestly the most certain means of disposing of you.”
Is there anything you do or say in life that isn’t a mind game?
He flashes a broad, toothy smile at Athena. “I brush my teeth every day. Can’t really see how to turn that into a mind game.”
I’m sure that if you think of it, you will.
“Oh, probably.” He looks down at her. “Do you remember how to get there?”
Athena looks around and realizes, she has no idea. She used to be a cat on the streets near Watch HQ quite often, but cat memories aren’t very good even for cat experiences, and undoubtedly some of the human memories she’s managed to cling to have forced out cat memories that she might have otherwise kept. Not really.
“Keep walking down the street to the traffic light, and turn left. You know which direction is left, don’t you?”
My spatial perception’s probably better than yours.
“A very good point. Well, after you turn left, walk all the way down the street until you see the building that says ‘Watch’ in front of it.”
Cats can’t read, Slither.
“True, but I’m guessing you’ll recognize it. Be careful of my teammates.”
How are we doing this? Do I sneak in and then you… do what? You said you could get me back into my body.
“Yes to the sneaking in. I’ll contact you once we’re both inside, and tell you what you need to do.”
Whatever. She raises her tail and walks away from him.
***
She does recognize Watch HQ. The smells hit her first - she’s been in this general area as a cat so often, she knows the scent of the sewer grate and the hot dog truck and the perfume from the perfume store wafting out every time someone opens the door. And then she’s in sight of the building. She looks up, drinking in the architecture - the shining, reflective windows that cover the entire building. They’re made of some sort of super-science unbreakable plastic, not glass, but her cat eyes can’t tell the difference anyway. Way up there are the balconies, where flying people can just fling themselves out into the air. There are flags on the roof, which if she remembers correctly is spiky, very difficult to maneuver in if you’re a big tall biped, very easy to slink through if you’re a tiny furry quadruped.
Things are coming back to her. People, friends of hers, their names and powers. Ariel, a flying woman with no legs, who wears a fish tail as part of her costume so she looks like a mermaid, swimming through air. Odysseus, the team leader, who was known for his strategies and his cleverness, once upon a time. Man’o’Might, the super-strong, broad-shouldered fellow who loved video games in his downtime, and made the best spaghetti she’d tasted. Were there others? She’s sure there were, but right now, they don’t come to mind.
It’s important not to let anyone from the Society of Sin see her, so she slips through the buildings to the back alleyways where humans keep their dumpsters. Wait, is that chicken she’s smelling? She clamps down on the urge to check. Once she’s human she can eat all the chicken she wants. Tiny yards, usually mostly occupied by dumpsters. This is a commercial district; other areas of the city have tiny yards with little gardens, sometimes, not just dumpsters. There are loading docks and ramps for the stores and the restaurants and the business buildings, but the Watch doesn’t have one aboveground - too easy for someone unauthorized to get in off the street. There’s a parking garage nearby, and if you know the right code, and if the security guards verify you, you can get through the gate on the lowest floor and then drive up into the loading area directly under the building.
But that’s how humans in cars are supposed to get in. Athena has a cat door.
There’s a set of pressure pads. They smell, very faintly, of basil, lavender, and hyacinth. A human would need to be lying on the ground to pick up the smells, and the pressure pads are tiny, not much bigger than a cat’s paw. Athena can’t remember the correct sequence, but there’s a workaround; if ever she lost her memory of the sequence because cat brains are not good at that and her human brain might be doing something else at the time, she was told to just press them in a sequence, any sequence, and repeat it, a lot of times. So she presses basil, hyacinth, lavender, basil, hyacinth, lavender, over and over, until one of the shining, reflective panels near the ground slides open into a dark tunnel. Dark right now, anyway.
As soon as she’s in the tunnel, her eyes adjust and it’s not dark anymore. There are LEDs in the tunnel, very few and very rare. A human who can miniaturize themselves and somehow find a way to sneak in here wouldn’t be able to see, but a cat can see just fine. Athena strolls down the tunnel as if it hasn’t been years since she was last here, memories returning.
Up ahead, she can hear the sounds of a fight. The Society must be attacking.
She runs up the tunnel, to the exit point high above the floor in the atrium. There’s a path down for her, spaced out narrow ledges on the wall the width of a cat that she can use to jump down, jump jump jump, but for right now, she gazes out at the battle in front of her. Yes. Yes, she recognizes all of them. No, wait, not that guy - he must be someone they brought in after she supposedly died. But the rest? She knows them. She’s seen them so many times in cat form, she has clear cat-eye images of them in her memory, unlike with Slither, who she’s seen more often in human form.
And there’s the Society of Sin, all of them, engaged in battle with the Watch. Except for Slither, off to the side, where he’s probably reading the minds of the members of the Watch and transferring that info to his teammates. The Society is running a certain amount of cover for him, as they always used to do - his telepathic range isn’t far enough for him to stay behind in their vehicle.
Executive Dysfunction is standing in the middle of the atrium, doing nothing. He’s not fighting. He’s looking at the battle, smirking. Dr. Ray and Dr. Awe facing off with various super-science inventions. Ariel fighting Fallen Angel in the air. Ms. Anthropy with her trick gun and Lightning Rod trying to zap her without killing her. Man’o’Might against Blockbuster. The Mechanist against the Beautiful Daughter. Odysseus in hand-to-hand combat with Kage, the martial arts expert. The new guy - Athena doesn’t know his name, or his power - helping Odysseus, because there’s no one for him to square off against. It looks like maybe one of the Society is missing - she doesn’t see the firestarter, whose name she can’t remember.
None of them see Slither, which is normal - he projects a sort of “I’m not here” field as long as he doesn’t move - but they also don’t notice the Executive, and that is unusual. Especially since they’re all giving him berth, dodging around him as if they know he’s there, but if they do know he’s there, it would be very strange for them not to be fighting him. Everyone knows how terrible the Executive’s power is, and they usually used to try to take him out as soon as they saw him. Not kill him, but knock him out so he can’t make them fall into confusion.
It looks as if the Executive has learned a new trick. No one but Lynx sees him there - and Slither, most likely - and no one notices that he ought to be there, either.
Lynx jumps down the ledges that were set there for her, so long ago. Okay. How is this going to work?
As soon as the Executive opens up with his power, you let go of the cat as if you’re going to jump back to your own body. You do remember how to do that, right?
Lynx wrinkles her nose slightly, though she’s too far from Slither for him to see it. Of course I do.
Once you do that, I’ll carry you into your new body, and then you’ll help the Watch deal with the Executive.
With a glance at the Executive, who is still not doing anything, Lynx thinks to Slither, It looks like they could deal with him now if I let them know he’s there.
She can hear Slither snicker inside her head. No, you can’t. He’s more powerful now than he’s ever been. Besides, you don’t have the ability to go unnoticed like he does.
Oh. Right. The rest of the Society will kill her if they see her. Particularly Ms. Anthropy, who’s already done it once. What do you mean he’s more powerful? He’s not making anyone confused, he’s just making it so they don’t realize he’s there.
Wait for it, Slither says.
And then the Executive grins, and spreads his arms wide, and everything stops.
The Watch, and the Society of Sin, all seem to lose track of what they’re doing. Ariel, who hovers all the time when she’s awake, remains in the air, looking around her like she’s trying to find car keys or something, but Fallen Angel lands on one of the balconies and leans over it, staring out into nothing. Odysseus scratches his head, clearly aware that something is odd, but not what. Ms. Anthropy starts obsessively checking her ammo. Both of the scientists check their pockets and other places they may have stored things, as if they’re looking for something, though they plainly aren’t sure what. No one is fighting any more, or even paying attention.
Executive Dysfunction walks over to Ms. Anthropy, easily moving out of the way of confused heroes and villains. He puts a hand out to her. She stares at him, clearly baffled, and he takes her gun from her, smiling at her. She seems to forget he’s done it the moment he turns his back to her.
He’s going to shoot your team, Slither informs Lynx helpfully. And it actually is helpful. Even without Executive’s confusion powers working on her, the fact that she’s been stuck in a cat brain all this time makes it hard for her to see human strategies.
Lynx swears. She doesn’t have any idea how much time she’ll have to stop him after she gets into her human body. Do it now! she yells, and releases her hold on the body.
It’s not like that, really. It’s like being an astronaut inside a ship, with a tether that can connect you to the ship, and when you throw yourself out the airlock, the tether spools out behind you, but if you’ve successfully made it to the airlock of the ship across you, then you can release the tether. She still has a connection to Athena the cat, but she’s floating free of the body, and then there’s a dizzy moment and she smells Slither, her mind interpreting his power touching her mind as a scent, and then she blinks her eyes open and she’s standing up with a gun in her hand.
She’s too disoriented to hold the gun. She drops it from nerveless fingers, and stares down at her large, broad hands. They aren’t her hands.
But she’s human. She has a human brain to work with, for the first time in years, and she’s so used to struggling so hard to think against the tiny cat brain she was stuck in, it feels like her mind is moving a mile a minute now. She looks down at Executive Dysfunction’s shoes and she knows where she is - who she is.
Slither is smirking at her. She thinks for a moment that he’s betrayed her, lied to her, and then she realizes… no. No, he never lied. He told her he’d get her into a human body, and she, with the intelligence of a cat, assumed he meant her own… even though she knew her own had been shot in the head.
Everyone is waking up from their confusion, looking around. Slither is strolling over to the cat Athena, who meows weakly, and Lynx realizes she can hear it as if she’s the cat meowing. She’s still tethered to Athena, she’s in Executive Dysfunction’s body, Athena is alive and has a mind but she’s not recovering from Lynx riding her nearly as fast as cats did when Lynx had her own body… because Lynx is still tethered, still using part of Athena’s brain as well as Executive Dysfunction’s.
She doesn’t know how to use the Executive’s power. She tries to speak, saying, “Odysseus?” as Odysseus turns to focus on her/the Executive. At the same time she feels Slither picking Athena up, and then she knows. The whole plan jumps out at her.
Odysseus is saying, “Lightning Rod!” and Slither’s hand is on Athena’s head and she sees the whole plan, now that she’s got a human brain (and half of a cat’s) to do it with. Slither transferred her into Executive Dysfunction. She doesn’t know how to use the Executive’s power. Odysseus is going to want to take the Executive down hard and keep him sedated and unable to use his power, pretty much forever, and she won’t have time to convince anyone she’s Lynx because they think she’s dead and because jumping to a human was never part of her power set. And Slither will kill Athena so she has no cat nearby to ride. She’ll be stuck as Executive Dysfunction and be put on trial for his crimes, or just be kept asleep until she dies.
Nice try, Slither, she thinks, knowing he can’t hear it because she’s got two brains again, and then she shifts back to Athena and bites Slither’s hand, hard. He yells and drops her, even as Odysseus finishes his command, “Take out the Executive!” and Lightning Rod, guessing what Odysseus is about to say, fires his lightning even before the sentence is done. Executive drops, but Lynx can’t feel it, because she’s solidly Athena again.
Athena runs toward Odysseus, yowling. She sees his eyes go wide. “…a cat?”
Ms. Anthropy dives for her gun, which is on the floor next to the unconscious Executive, but Ariel, who’s been floating, bobbing around the room with no apparent sense of why or what she should be doing when Executive’s power was in action, is now awake and no longer confused. She dips down, grabs Ms. Anthropy, and lifts her into the air. Ms. Anthropy curses and struggles, but Ariel has her tightly.
Kage, apparently recognizing when the team is beaten, retreats, and the others do as well. Slither slinks toward the front of the atrium, obviously trying to sneak out before anyone sees him. Athena meows urgently at Odysseus and points her paw at Slither.
“Lynx?” he whispers, and then, “That’s Slither! Take him-”
Dr. Ray fires a paralysis wave at Slither, knocking him down to the floor. The rest of the Society of Sin are gone, but Executive Dysfunction, Ms. Anthropy, and Slither have been captured.
“You were supposed to have let go of the cat!” Slither yells, furiously, at her, as he’s dragged off by Man’o’Might, who is also carrying the unconscious Executive Dysfunction. “You wanted to be human! Why did you jump back to the cat?”
Because I was a lot smarter when I got into a human brain, and I saw what you were going for, Athena tells him, washing her paws as he goes past. It’s not hard to fool a cat, Slither, but when I’m in a human, I’m not stupid.
“Lynx?” Odysseus asks, again, more firmly. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
Athena waves her tail vigorously, before remembering that humans can’t easily read cat body language. She stands up and weaves in and out of Odysseus’ legs, purring.
“I think it’s you, but nod your head if you understand me,” he says, and she looks up at him and bobs her head, twice.
He picks her up and hugs her, and she nuzzles her face against his. “It is you! You’re alive! Lynx, you’re alive!”
And all of the rest of the Watch crowd around her, petting her and hugging her and honestly irritating the shit out of her, because her cat tolerance for being carried and touched by humans has run out several minutes ago, but she puts up with it, because they’re her friends, and she’s finally home.
***
Dr. Ray and Odysseus try to teach her to type. It doesn’t work well, for the same reason she never was able to communicate with Jane that way. They give her a simplified set of communication buttons where she can say about ten different things, which is better than nothing, and they promise her, they’ll keep working to find a way for her to communicate. If she’s lucky, maybe they’ll find a way before she loses the rest of her human mind. Or was that a lie Slither told her to get her to make her more eager to take his offer? She doesn’t have a way to know, because she can’t ask.
Ms. Anthropy goes to jail for her murder. Executive Dysfunction is, as Lynx had suspected, kept in a medically equipped cell in Watch HQ, drugged so that he can’t muster up his powers. It’s cruel, but what else can they do, kill him? He’s too dangerous. Slither escapes, but doesn’t return to the Society of Sin, and word is, they want him dead, so he’s not likely to.
A week after Lynx is back with the Watch, Odysseus brings her a flyer with a picture of a tortoiseshell cat who looks a lot like her on it. “This is a missing cat flyer,” he says. “Says this cat, who looks like you, disappeared the day you returned to us. It says to call someone named Jane if you’re found. Is that who you were staying with?”
Athena meows once and bobs her head. Odysseus asks, “Do you want to go back to her house to say goodbye?”, and she does it again.
And so the next day, she and Odysseus are back at Jane’s house, and Jane is stunned. “Aren’t you - aren’t you Odysseus? The superhero?”
Odysseus nods. “That’s me, ma’am.”
“And you’re bringing me back my cat?” She sounds like she can’t believe it.
“Not… exactly.” Odysseus sets Athena down, where she can’t resist rubbing her face against Jane’s legs. “This cat, who you call Athena, is actually our teammate Lynx. We’ve thought her dead for years, but it turns out, she’s stuck in her cat form.” Lynx wonders why Odysseus is explaining her powers like that, and then she realizes that maybe a cat lover wouldn’t be thrilled with a person who takes over cat minds taking over her pet, even though she’s only been Jane’s pet since she lost her human body.
“Oh my god. My cat is a person? My cat is a superhero?”
“She is, yes. She wanted to come back to say goodbye to you and give you closure.”
Athena rubs against Odysseus’ legs too, trying to send Jane the message that Odysseus is her friend. Jay pokes his head around the corner, and, presumably deciding that if Jane’s so friendly with that man, he’s probably not dangerous to cats, he comes out to smell her breath and rub faces with her. That makes her sad. She can give closure to Jane, but not to Jay; she has no way of telling him that she’s leaving and she’s not coming back.
“Oh, you poor thing… no wonder you always wanted the human food! I’m so sorry.” Jane picks Athena up. “I still have some rotisserie chicken if you’d like?”
Athena nods. Jane’s face lights up. “I had no idea you could do that! Were you deep undercover? Would your enemies have been able to find you if they realized you were a human in a cat body?”
Her enemy had no trouble finding her, and she has no way of explaining to Jane that she’d lost enough of her human memories that she didn’t remember the head-nodding gesture for yes until Odysseus reminded her. It’s all right. Jane brings her some rotisserie chicken, microwaved for 30 seconds to take the refrigerator chill off of it, and Athena tries to eat it slowly, to savor it, but it’s too good. She devours it.
“Thank you for taking such good care of our teammate, ma’am,” Odysseus says.
***
Now that she knows the real Athena is still alive in here, and could be restored to her own cat life if Lynx could just get out of her body, she wants desperately to find a solution. Even a way to jump to a different cat and free Athena, if she can. But she was never able to jump from cat to cat without going through her own body first. Without a human body, she has no way to release Athena short of dying, and she wants to give the cat back her cat life, but not enough to die for it.
Is she losing her mind? Is her intelligence dissolving, crushed under the pressure of being jammed into a tiny cat brain? She doesn’t know, and she has no way to ask the question. Dr. Ray doesn’t seem to have thought it might be an issue - he recognizes that maybe she’s lost some memories, but he doesn’t behave as if Slither’s warning is anything she has to worry about. She wishes she could believe that means he knows about it and doesn’t think it’s a problem, rather than that it’s never occurred to him.
It’s still so lonely living among people she can’t communicate with, but they understand she’s intelligent - mostly anyway - and they’re willing to try to understand her body language. And to make sure she gets chicken dinners, warm ones, whenever she wants. And they’re her friends. They talk about people she knows, situations she was there for, while she sits on their laps and they pet her. It’s better than living entirely as a pet cat, and she knows Ray is trying to find a way to get her into a human body, ethically, and maybe he’ll even do it before she loses her mind or dies of old age.
It’s not really enough. But it’s what she’s got, so she’ll make do.
The people she’s living with gave her a name, since she couldn’t exactly tell them what her name used to be. They call her Athena. This is awfully ironic. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and craft, she can remember that, even if she can’t remember her own name. And now, with her memories shattered and stuffed into a brain vastly smaller than it once was, and all her dexterity gone forever, she has no wisdom and she cannot do crafts.
One of the people she lives with, a woman named Jane, opens the refrigerator. Athena smells delicious food. Ooh, is that a rotisserie chicken in there? If she times this just right, she might be able to grab the chicken and run off with it. The fridge is one of the kind with a pull-out freezer drawer on the bottom, making a convenient ledge for Athena to sit on. She waits until Jane is busy trying to get milk off of the door, and leaps, standing and stretching to grab the chicken, using the shelves of the fridge to keep her erratic balance.
“Athena, what are you doing? You ridiculous cat. Are you trying to get the chicken again?” Jane asks, in the tone of voice humans use to talk to little children and pets, and it grates on Athena’s nerves fiercely. You don’t have to talk to me like that. I understand you! But of course, she has no way of conveying that. At one point she tried to rip keys off a keyboard so she could spell out the truth of what she was, but her cat brain couldn’t handle making sense of the symbols on the keyboard and she wasn’t sure she still knew how to spell anything. What sound did a D make, again? Was it the buh sound or the duh sound?
Jane’s hands push Athena out of the refrigerator, with no chicken, and Athena screams at her in frustration, but it comes out as a cat’s yowl. She’s so tired of eating cat food. There’s only one kind of cat food she finds even remotely palatable, because it’s so bland, so that’s what they feed her… but eating the most boring food in existence because the taste of everything else she might eat instead is just horrible does not thrill her. She wants chicken. And ham. Not fish, she’s so sick of fish. The smell of fish from the super-concentrated cans of wet catfood made from fish has sickened her to the point where she won’t eat fish on a plate either. Beef smells good, but she can’t easily chew it.
There were foods she used to like, once upon a time, that are lost to her now. She remembers loving cake, but she can’t remember what it tasted like, and when she sniffs at cake now, it smells like cardboard. Cats can’t taste sugar. Or smell it, apparently. Rather, she can smell it - she can smell so much, now - but it doesn’t smell good.
“Come on, kitty. Let’s check your bowl,” Jane says, leaving the milk on the counter. She walks over to the cat feeder, which is half full. Athena hadn’t wanted the chicken because she was hungry, she wanted the chicken because she was so goddamn sick of cat food. “No, see, you’ve got plenty of food!” Jane shakes the feeder, making more crunchy bits fall out of the hopper and into the bowl.
Athena gives up. She stalks over to the door and stands up, trying to reach the doorknob. If she just was a slightly longer cat, she might… just… reach…
Jane approaches, and Athena falls down, the effort of being bipedal even with the door to support her overwhelming her. She meows again for good measure.
“Oh, if you can’t get my chicken you want to get out? Okay, fine,” Jane sighs, and opens the door.
Athena sits at the threshold, breathing through her nose, letting all the scents come to her, checking to make sure there are no enemy cats in the area. Humans plainly do not understand this. “Go on, now, you wanted to go out,” Jane says, and touches Athena’s backside lightly with her foot, signaling that if she doesn’t go on her own power, Jane might scoot her out with a foot. It’s not a kick, it’s not painful, but it’s humiliating.
I had a house once, just like you. I had pets. Dogs, not cats. It isn’t that Athena didn’t love cats in her human incarnation; she didn’t have pet cats precisely because she loves cats, and the idea of risking the destruction of a beloved pet’s mind if something went wrong frightened her. The cat she is now was a stray, and she still feels bad about it. Whoever this cat was before Athena rode her that final time, she’s gone forever now, probably.
Well. Time to go dumpster diving… wait, is that Jay?
The gray tabby male approaches her, the comforting scent of him wafting toward her. Athena waves her tail in excitement, and smells Jay’s happiness at seeing her. They sniff at each other’s breath. Ugh, Jay must have gotten into some fish.
As soon as he smelled her breath, Jay paces away from her, then turns back to see if she’s following. Hopefully he isn’t leading her to fish, but Athena is pretty sure Jay knows she hates fish. It’s hard for her to tell what other cats know - her own mind is a human mind stuffed awkwardly into a cat brain, where it doesn’t fit, her cat instincts often confused and jangled by inappropriate human memories. She has no idea what it’s like to think like a real cat. Do cats have enough theory of mind to be able to tell that another cat has a food preference?
But what Jay leads her to was a fast food bag spilled on the ground, with chicken nuggets inside it.
Yes! Athena tears up the chicken nuggets, removing the unappetizing coating and ravaging the meat inside with her teeth. The bag is probably from… oh, no, she can’t have lost that, that name used to be everywhere, what was it… Mike something? Mike Burger? Maybe. Since getting stuck in a cat, Athena’s lost the ability to read logos; something about her limited color vision and maybe about how the cat brain processes information, she isn’t sure.
Afterward, she and Jay walk down the street, inspecting their territory, checking where other cats put down markers. One good thing about this transformation - cat pee only smells bad close up. At a distance, what she’s picking up are the pheromones, which would tell her a lot about the other cats, if only she knew how to interpret it. So far she’s gotten “male”, “female”, “neutered”, “pregnant” and “kitten” from scent, and that’s about it. Jay is probably getting a lot more, but contrary to children’s books, cats do not have a language; Jay can’t convey any really complex information to her any more than she can to a human. They’re friends, but she can’t talk to him.
The part of her that is human, and expects to be able to talk to her friends, is so goddamn lonely.
“Oh, as I live and breathe. Is that - are you Lynx?”
Athena can’t recognize human faces the way a human can anymore, and when she was human she didn’t have the sense of smell that she has now, but the sound of a human voice sounds the same whether she’s a human or a cat. Cats can hear it further away, but it sounds the same.
Before she can control her reaction, she backs up, fur standing on end, and hisses at the speaker. Jay looks at her, at the human she’s hissing at, and bolts - cats don’t stand their ground to defend other cats very often, aside from mothers with kittens. She doesn’t hold it against him.
“Oh!” The human laughs at her. “You look so ridiculous like that! Calm down, we’re no longer enemies.”
Really? Athena thinks at him. Could have fooled me.
Slither, whose name is in no way an accurate representation of his powers, chortles. “Oh, come on now. When you were with a team, and you had your human body anchoring you, you were a threat, but now? You don’t even remember your name, your mind is in complete disarray, and you have no powers beyond the abilities of any house cat. I have nothing against you, now that you’ve been defeated so thoroughly. Does the Watch even know what happened to you or where you are?”
Athena struggles to remember. The Watch. It sounds so familiar.
“Oh, ha! You don’t even remember your own team! This is too rich!” Slither snickers.
A team… yes. Yes, she distantly remembers. Images of men and women in tightly fitting clothing, or cloaks. Friends. She can’t remember any of their names, but she remembers the feelings. The warmth, the feeling of belonging. The joy of fighting by their side. The despair when she realized they thought she was dead, that they won’t even look for her because her body was leaking blood and brains all over the room she should have been safe in and it will never occur to them that she’d survive that. She didn’t know she’d survive that. She always assumed that if she was riding a cat and her body died, she’d die… not stay behind in the cat, forever.
No, wait, that isn’t true. That’s why she never had pet cats, because she was afraid that when she died, she might accidentally jump into one of her own cats. When she rides an animal - rode an animal, she can’t really call what she’s doing now riding - the animal’s own mind would go dormant until she released it, but she always worried that if her body died while she was riding, the animal’s mind would be suppressed forever, effectively dead. She’s tried to find any evidence of the cat who used to live in this body, to no effect. Whoever she was, whatever family may have loved her once, she’s gone now.
But she never told the Watch about her fear - did she? Maybe she did and she just doesn’t remember.
“No, you never told them,” Slither says, and she remembers why he annoys her beyond all the other villains she’s fought. Slither’s a telepath. In the old days, when she was human, he couldn’t read her mind when she was riding - he complained one time it was something about her mind being in two places at once, executing on two different pieces of wetware. Obviously he doesn’t have that limitation any more, or they couldn’t be having this conversation. It’s not the telepathy that makes him annoying, though; it’s how supercilious he is about it. “Ever since Ms. Anthropy killed your human body, the Watch has practically fallen apart.” He puts his hands together next to his cheek and draws his shoulders in, a parody of a little girl over-emoting. “The poor dears! They never recovered from knowing that someone waltzed in through their defenses and killed the friend they thought they were protecting, while they were occupied elsewhere.”
I don’t even remember them, Athena thinks. They’re broken up over what they think was my death, and I can’t even remember them. She thinks she ought to care about this. She ought to be sad, but her cat brain just can’t muster up sorrow for the abstract concept of “people who cared about me once who I don’t remember”.
Slither squats in front of her, which makes it a lot easier to see him, because cat vision isn’t as acute as human. She stares at him with unblinking eyes, because that’s what cats do when they’re angry and proud and they don’t want to back down, and she memorizes what he looks like to her as a cat. He’s a white man, tall and boney, his skin a kind of pale yellow, which is normal for white people; she has a sneaking feeling that it really isn’t, that her human eyes could see and comprehend an entire color range that cats aren’t capable of, but without a human brain to anchor her she can’t imagine what that color could have been. His hair is long, sort of greasy, and he smells like he doesn’t shower very often, which doesn’t bother her as a cat nearly as much as it would have if she were human… after all, she herself never goes near a tub nowadays if she can help it. She remembers that when they were fighting, he used to wear a snake-themed costume; she remembers being surprised when she found out his powers have nothing to do with snakes, and his obnoxious laughter. (Not that they ever actually fought. Athena was immune to Slither’s power when she was riding, but Slither, like all humans, was entirely too big and powerful for a cat’s tiny claws to do much damage to; Athena was never a fighter. It was her job to gather intelligence, and also… something else? There was… something? It slips away from her and she can’t grasp it.)
“You poor, poor thing,” Slither says. “You were a worthy opponent, Lynx; I hate seeing what’s happened to you. You’re losing your mind, aren’t you?”
Losing? I can’t be more cat than I’ve already become; I think what I’ve lost I’ve lost, and everything else is still here.
“Of course you’d think that,” Slither says. “If you were human, constantly being presented with human tasks to do, and you were losing the ability to do them, you’d notice. But you’re a cat. You’re never asked to remember anything, or to do human tasks, so you have no opportunity to notice that your abilities to do so are slipping away.”
How would you know that?
“I checked up on you after Ms. Anthropy killed you, of course.”
Athena doesn’t remember dying. One moment she was in two places at once, processing through two brains at once, lying down in Watch HQ and riding a little tortoiseshell, and the next, she was disoriented and lost, the connection to her human self just gone. She was -
Wait! A flicker! She remembers just a little bit more about the Watch. She remembers slipping into their headquarters, and none of them were there. She went to where her body was, and found her own face unrecognizable, a hole blasted through her skull. It was unmistakably her, though; she’d smelled herself many times when riding cats, and her cat-memories transferred with her from cat to cat even though she hadn’t easily been able to access them as a human.
Athena remembers running, panicking. She should have stayed. She completely forgot that the Watch would care about her and think she was dead; cats don’t think of such things. She just ran.
You knew I was alive, but you didn’t bother to tell anyone else?
Slither shrugs. “I’m a villain, darling, I have no obligation to tell the heroes anything. And if you couldn’t be bothered to tell them yourself…”
I panicked and then I forgot who they were because I’m a cat!
“Details,” Slither says, waving his hand. “But listen. I’m not here to mock you - well, I’m not here just to mock you.” He laughs. “I wanted to make a deal with you.”
Athena gives Slither her best unimpressed look, which she imagines must look really unimpressed, given that she is a cat and they always look unimpressed. Why would I want to make a deal with you?
“Because someone needs to stop the Executive,” Slither says, quietly, very quietly, as if he’s afraid someone might overhear. She’s not sure she’d even be able to hear him if she was human.
Athena’s eyes widen and her tail twitches, her ears stiffening upright and pointing forward. You’re defecting from the Society?
Slither shakes his head. “Oh, no, no. I’m just like Fagin from that musical. You know, ‘Oliver’?” He breaks into song. “‘I'm reviewing the situation, I'm a bad 'un and a bad 'un I shall stay! You'll be seeing no transformation, but it's wrong to be a rogue in ev'ry way.’” He looks down at her. “Oh, come now. My singing’s not that bad.”
I wouldn’t know. Music’s a human thing. I understand the words you said, but it just sounds like you added some nonsense tones to the words.
“Everyone’s a critic,” Slither grouses. And then he speaks in her mind. Executive Dysfunction is out of control. He’s taken advantage of the Watch’s grief and guilt over losing you, and he’s made it far worse - paralyzing them, essentially. I’m sure you don’t watch the news, being a cat, but villains are running rampant, all over the state, and the Watch is barely able to pull themselves together to do anything about it.
Why do you care? Athena asks.
Because my success is contingent on there being a society for me to exploit, Slither replies with a note of mockery, but also more honesty than she expects from him. If there are no rich people, then there are no people I can steal passwords from and wire money to myself. If there is no stock market, there are no tips I can pick up from reading corporate leaders’ minds to make myself wealthy. If society collapses, I’m not going to get to buy anything with my wealth. He sits on the pavement, criss-cross applesauce. I didn’t know the Executive was an anarchist before this, or I’d never have signed up with the Society of Sin.
Athena gives him the unimpressed look again. How did you not know that when you can read minds?
I can’t read the Executive’s. Never could. Just like his power doesn’t work on me.
Executive Dysfunction’s power is to make people confused. That doesn’t sound like such a dangerous and formidable thing, but Athena knows better. In the heat of battle, confusion kills. Confused superheroes strike each other down with friendly fire, harm civilians, destroy property… or just plain fail. A superhero who loses track of what they’re doing in the middle of doing it is not likely to win the day. The Executive’s power never used to work on Athena when she was riding a cat, so she would yowl at her teammates, or nip them, or climb their legs, to break the fog and let them concentrate again. It’s counter-intuitive - you would think a cat yowling at you would break your concentration - but the confusion the Executive inflicts often manifests as the victim hyper-focusing on something useless, or letting their mind drift and keep shifting gears. She experienced it when she was just a human, one time, when she hadn’t found a cat to ride yet. So a swat with a paw or a well-timed kitty screech could break them out of it.
Without her, there might not be anyone left in the Watch who can fight Executive Dysfunction’s power. She still can’t remember who’s in the Watch. She hadn’t remembered either Ms. Anthropy or Executive Dysfunction until Slither mentioned them.
I don’t see what I can do about any of that. I’m a cat. Like you said, my hero days are over. She’s fairly sure she won’t be able to find Watch headquarters even if she tries.
“But you don’t have to stay a cat,” Slither wheedles, speaking aloud again.
Athena’s ears perk and she lifts her head, the picture of a cat who just heard something that alerted her. What are you saying?
“I’m saying that I could facilitate your transfer to a human body.”
If Athena were human, she might have paced, or fidgeted with her hands. The nervous energy drives her to start grooming herself, instead, because she’s a cat and that’s how cats calm themselves. You never had that ability before… did you? Athena didn’t mean to add the last, questioning part, but her command of her own memories is terrible and she knows it, and it makes her second-guess everything she believes about her past.
“My dear Lynx. I named myself Slither and wore snake costumes so people would make assumptions and never guess my true power. Do you seriously believe I’m incapable of hiding some of my full capacities, to keep them in reserve so no one will expect them when I use them?”
That… certainly sounded in character for Slither. That’s all you want me to do? Get my human body back?
Slither nods. “And then tell the Watch you’re alive, of course, and help them fight back against the Society.” He’s whispering again. “With you back to defend them from the Executive, and the grief that’s been dragging them down released, they’ll be able to beat him - he’ll never see it coming. He thinks you’re dead, too. Only I know the truth.”
Why only you?
“Because you were with your team on the battlefield when I could suddenly read you. The moment you sensed you didn’t have your human body anymore, I read it in your mind. And then you ran, but I’ve known since that moment that you were alive in the cat body.” He sighs. “I did think the deterioration of your mind might go a bit slower, though. The fact that you don’t remember any of your best friends that you fought beside for years… you can’t even read logos anymore, you don’t remember the existence of the color red, and what’s worse, your capacity for human problem-solving is fading. You can’t even grab yourself a rotisserie kitchen from a refrigerator.”
Humans are bigger than me and I don’t have thumbs. How am I supposed to open the refrigerator when Jane or someone isn’t there to stop me?
“If you still had a human’s mind, you’d likely be able to come up with six different answers to that question, but cats don’t do very well on problem-solving tasks. Actually, dogs are smarter.”
Athena doesn’t dignify that with an answer.
“How interesting,” Slither murmurs. “You have to actually think in words, like a human, for me to be able to hear you. That’s not your default mode, is it?... Is it getting harder to do?”
Athena has no idea if it’s getting harder to think in words. Did she think in words more when this first happened? Or maybe less? Has she gotten more used to cajoling human patterns out of a cat brain? She hasn’t been paying enough attention to know.
“In any regard,” and now Slither stands up. “I’ve got things to do right now, but I’ll be back tomorrow, around noon. Oh, does noon mean anything to cats? Do you even know what time it is?”
When the sun is in the middle of the sky. I still remember that much.
“Good, then I’m glad I picked noon! I imagine 3 pm would be a lot harder for you to manage.” He chuckles. “We can help each other. You can be human again, I can see a certain colleague taken down before he ruins everything for me, and you’ll be a hero again. Think about it.”
Athena has thought about it and doesn’t see any downside, but there are things Slither probably isn’t telling her, and she can’t get her cat brain to cooperate on imagining what they might be. The emotional punch of you could be human again is overwhelming her limited ability to think, but she has to. Slither always has an angle. His story about wanting Executive Dysfunction defeated makes sense, but she’s a cat. Would she even be able to detect a hole in his story if there was one?
Slither walks away. Athena washes herself for some time, until she’s composed, and heads back to the house, where she meows at the door until Jane’s husband Adam lets her in. Time to eat some shitty cat food and think through… wait, what is she supposed to think through again?
It’s so frustrating to have a cat memory. Things like the location of smells and particularly interesting potential mouseholes and a detailed three-dimensional map of her entire territory stick with her, but sometimes events that happened ten minutes ago fade away and she can only catch them in glimpses.
Racking her brain won’t help. That just makes it worse, most of the time. She eats bland and boring cat food, uses her litter box, and leaps up onto the couch in the living room, stretching out for a nap. It’s then, when her mind is at peace and starting to drop off into sleep, that she remembers. Oh, yeah! Slither! And he said he could get me back into my human body!
Well. Now she can’t afford to go to sleep until she’s mulled the offer over as well as a cat can; if she sleeps before putting in the time to think about Slither’s offer, she’s afraid she’ll forget it completely.
So. Try to use logic. It’s hard, with a cat brain, but she has to try. What could Slither be after, if he’s lying? When she was human, she’d have known, but cats do not have mirror neurons that work to model humans, so she has to drag out memories of being human and cudgel her cat brain into processing them as information.
Slither wants to be rich. He could use his powers to get rich, but he’s a villain. Slither also likes being the smartest guy in the room, but he could get that without being a villain. He likes being secretive and always being one step ahead of everyone else, but he could in theory do that without being a villain, too.
Why is Slither a villain? Why isn’t he a more normal evil person, like a CEO or something, hiding that he has a power rather than letting people think his power is something completely different from what it is? Ms. Anthropy is sadistic and angry and likes to hurt people. Executive Dysfunction is apparently an anarchist. The others in the Society of Sin are all driven by something that makes sense - mad scientists who want to perform unethical experiments and need money and resources to do so; ideologues with bizarre ideologies; there’s the one guy whose name she forgets who just likes to see things burn, metaphorically and literally.
But Slither? Everything she knows he wants is something it would be easier for him to get in some legitimate way. So why is he a villain?
The only answer her cat brain can produce for her is so what?
Okay, try from a different angle. Is there any reason Slither might be lying to her?
Because he thinks it’s fun. Yeah, okay, that could always be Slither’s motive for anything.
Because he doesn’t want to defeat Executive Dysfunction and let the Watch get back together. Okay, but everything he said about why he wants Executive Dysfunction to be defeated makes sense, and if things make sense to a cat, they must be true.
Because… because… oh, this is making her head hurt. She can’t work this out. Why doesn’t she just take the offer, and when she’s in a human body again, then she can figure out what Slither’s real game is?
Making the decision is a relief. Athena stretches, closes her eyes, and relaxes for her nap.
***
At noon the next day, she’s sitting out on the sidewalk, washing her paws to control her nervousness. Cats can’t actually tell time. The sun’s in the top of the sky, but is it really noon, or is it afternoon and she missed the meeting? Or is it an hour or two away from noon, and she’s going to have to wait that long?
“Lynx, such a pleasure to see you!”
Okay. So it really is noon. Nice to know.
I’ll take you up on your offer. You get me back into my body, and I can pull the Watch together and get them to take Executive Dysfunction out.
“Oh, an excellent choice!” Slither claps his hands.
And then he bends down to pick her up. Athena yowls and bolts under a bush. I never said you can touch me!
“Oh, come now. How do you expect us to get to Watch headquarters at the speed a cat can walk?”
I can run a lot faster than you.
“Yes, but I can keep walking when you must stop running. Remember? Humans are persistence predators? Anyway, I’d planned on driving.”
Fine. I’ll go in your car, but you are not to pick me up. I can jump in.
She looks back at the house as she walks after Slither. Jane and her family will never know what happened to their pet cat. Even if the cat body survives and has a cat mind after hers is out of it… the cat won’t know to return to Jane’s house. She’ll become a stray again.
Maybe Athena - no, by then she’ll be Lynx and this cat would be Athena - maybe Lynx will take Athena and bring her back to Jane’s house. She won’t know those people, but she’ll smell her own scent all over the place and recognize this as her home. Jane and the others might perceive her acting strangely, but she’ll be the same cat, physically, and she’ll warm up with the affection they’d give her. And food. Athena would probably like normal cat food, once Lynx isn’t riding her anymore.
Slither opens the passenger door to his car, next to the sidewalk, and Athena jumps up to the seat. Once Slither is in the car’s driver seat, he says mockingly, “Don’t you think you ought to put your seat belt on?”
You’re not funny, Athena thinks at him. Just drive.
***
The Watch HQ is still downtown. Dimly Athena remembers arguments about whether they should move it out of the city - in the city, they could respond to crises more quickly, since those crises almost always happened in the city, but if they were attacked at the HQ there was a high risk of collateral damage and danger to civilians. Looks like they didn’t change it. She can’t remember what her position on it was.
Tell me about the Watch, she thinks to Slither. Remind me who they are.
“Oh, you’ll remember soon enough, don’t you think?” He turns on his cell phone from the hands-free console, and dials a number. A woman’s voice Athena should know, but can’t remember, answers.
“Dr. Awe. What do you want, Slither?”
“It’s go time,” Slither says.
Dr. Awe laughs. “Beautiful. I’ll tell the Executive. You’re on your way?”
“As we speak.”
For a crazed moment Athena considers meowing. Just to hear how Awe reacts, to see what Slither does. Back in the old days, the Society of Sin used to pre-emptively attack cats who were anywhere nearby when they were starting or in the middle of an operation, because no one but Slither could tell if a given cat was her, and Slither, for some reason, never told his fellows. Maybe Slither is a villain because villains get to keep a lot of secrets; it seems to be a thing he does so often, for so little purpose sometimes, that maybe he just really enjoys having information no one else has. Heroes keep secrets also, but she can’t imagine Slither ever wanting to be a hero.
If she meows, Awe’s reaction will tell her if Slither ever told any of his fellows that Lynx was still alive.
On the other hand, it might make it impossible for Slither to do whatever he’s planning that’s going to get her back into her human body. So she doesn’t do it. Slither hangs up the phone.
You’re going to attack the Watch?
“Of course. How else can I put the Executive in a place where the Watch can take him down as soon as they have you to inspire them?” That last bit is definitely mockery. She’s human enough to remember what human vocal tones mean.
I didn’t inspire them. I swatted them with a paw or yowled at them when I could see that Executive Dysfunction was getting to them. Possibly she’ll still be able to do that, even from the cat body; Slither’s power works on her now, without two brains to create too much noise for him to hear her thoughts, but Executive Dysfunction’s power might only work on human brains. She’s never seen him use it on an animal, whereas obviously Slither can.
***
Slither parks the car downtown. This strikes Athena as slightly ridiculous. The Society of Sin has a hovercraft, and a fleet of cargo vans, and a giant robot that can carry them; the fact that Slither drives his own car and parks it some distance from Watch HQ, to rendezvous with his team there, is just silly.
“From this point on you and I have to go our separate ways. I’m sure you remember that most members of the Society will try to kill a cat.”
Athena remembers. Do they know I’m alive?
“They aren’t as certain that you’re dead as the Watch is. I may possibly have dropped some hints, in the past, that shooting you in the head while you were riding a cat wasn’t honestly the most certain means of disposing of you.”
Is there anything you do or say in life that isn’t a mind game?
He flashes a broad, toothy smile at Athena. “I brush my teeth every day. Can’t really see how to turn that into a mind game.”
I’m sure that if you think of it, you will.
“Oh, probably.” He looks down at her. “Do you remember how to get there?”
Athena looks around and realizes, she has no idea. She used to be a cat on the streets near Watch HQ quite often, but cat memories aren’t very good even for cat experiences, and undoubtedly some of the human memories she’s managed to cling to have forced out cat memories that she might have otherwise kept. Not really.
“Keep walking down the street to the traffic light, and turn left. You know which direction is left, don’t you?”
My spatial perception’s probably better than yours.
“A very good point. Well, after you turn left, walk all the way down the street until you see the building that says ‘Watch’ in front of it.”
Cats can’t read, Slither.
“True, but I’m guessing you’ll recognize it. Be careful of my teammates.”
How are we doing this? Do I sneak in and then you… do what? You said you could get me back into my body.
“Yes to the sneaking in. I’ll contact you once we’re both inside, and tell you what you need to do.”
Whatever. She raises her tail and walks away from him.
***
She does recognize Watch HQ. The smells hit her first - she’s been in this general area as a cat so often, she knows the scent of the sewer grate and the hot dog truck and the perfume from the perfume store wafting out every time someone opens the door. And then she’s in sight of the building. She looks up, drinking in the architecture - the shining, reflective windows that cover the entire building. They’re made of some sort of super-science unbreakable plastic, not glass, but her cat eyes can’t tell the difference anyway. Way up there are the balconies, where flying people can just fling themselves out into the air. There are flags on the roof, which if she remembers correctly is spiky, very difficult to maneuver in if you’re a big tall biped, very easy to slink through if you’re a tiny furry quadruped.
Things are coming back to her. People, friends of hers, their names and powers. Ariel, a flying woman with no legs, who wears a fish tail as part of her costume so she looks like a mermaid, swimming through air. Odysseus, the team leader, who was known for his strategies and his cleverness, once upon a time. Man’o’Might, the super-strong, broad-shouldered fellow who loved video games in his downtime, and made the best spaghetti she’d tasted. Were there others? She’s sure there were, but right now, they don’t come to mind.
It’s important not to let anyone from the Society of Sin see her, so she slips through the buildings to the back alleyways where humans keep their dumpsters. Wait, is that chicken she’s smelling? She clamps down on the urge to check. Once she’s human she can eat all the chicken she wants. Tiny yards, usually mostly occupied by dumpsters. This is a commercial district; other areas of the city have tiny yards with little gardens, sometimes, not just dumpsters. There are loading docks and ramps for the stores and the restaurants and the business buildings, but the Watch doesn’t have one aboveground - too easy for someone unauthorized to get in off the street. There’s a parking garage nearby, and if you know the right code, and if the security guards verify you, you can get through the gate on the lowest floor and then drive up into the loading area directly under the building.
But that’s how humans in cars are supposed to get in. Athena has a cat door.
There’s a set of pressure pads. They smell, very faintly, of basil, lavender, and hyacinth. A human would need to be lying on the ground to pick up the smells, and the pressure pads are tiny, not much bigger than a cat’s paw. Athena can’t remember the correct sequence, but there’s a workaround; if ever she lost her memory of the sequence because cat brains are not good at that and her human brain might be doing something else at the time, she was told to just press them in a sequence, any sequence, and repeat it, a lot of times. So she presses basil, hyacinth, lavender, basil, hyacinth, lavender, over and over, until one of the shining, reflective panels near the ground slides open into a dark tunnel. Dark right now, anyway.
As soon as she’s in the tunnel, her eyes adjust and it’s not dark anymore. There are LEDs in the tunnel, very few and very rare. A human who can miniaturize themselves and somehow find a way to sneak in here wouldn’t be able to see, but a cat can see just fine. Athena strolls down the tunnel as if it hasn’t been years since she was last here, memories returning.
Up ahead, she can hear the sounds of a fight. The Society must be attacking.
She runs up the tunnel, to the exit point high above the floor in the atrium. There’s a path down for her, spaced out narrow ledges on the wall the width of a cat that she can use to jump down, jump jump jump, but for right now, she gazes out at the battle in front of her. Yes. Yes, she recognizes all of them. No, wait, not that guy - he must be someone they brought in after she supposedly died. But the rest? She knows them. She’s seen them so many times in cat form, she has clear cat-eye images of them in her memory, unlike with Slither, who she’s seen more often in human form.
And there’s the Society of Sin, all of them, engaged in battle with the Watch. Except for Slither, off to the side, where he’s probably reading the minds of the members of the Watch and transferring that info to his teammates. The Society is running a certain amount of cover for him, as they always used to do - his telepathic range isn’t far enough for him to stay behind in their vehicle.
Executive Dysfunction is standing in the middle of the atrium, doing nothing. He’s not fighting. He’s looking at the battle, smirking. Dr. Ray and Dr. Awe facing off with various super-science inventions. Ariel fighting Fallen Angel in the air. Ms. Anthropy with her trick gun and Lightning Rod trying to zap her without killing her. Man’o’Might against Blockbuster. The Mechanist against the Beautiful Daughter. Odysseus in hand-to-hand combat with Kage, the martial arts expert. The new guy - Athena doesn’t know his name, or his power - helping Odysseus, because there’s no one for him to square off against. It looks like maybe one of the Society is missing - she doesn’t see the firestarter, whose name she can’t remember.
None of them see Slither, which is normal - he projects a sort of “I’m not here” field as long as he doesn’t move - but they also don’t notice the Executive, and that is unusual. Especially since they’re all giving him berth, dodging around him as if they know he’s there, but if they do know he’s there, it would be very strange for them not to be fighting him. Everyone knows how terrible the Executive’s power is, and they usually used to try to take him out as soon as they saw him. Not kill him, but knock him out so he can’t make them fall into confusion.
It looks as if the Executive has learned a new trick. No one but Lynx sees him there - and Slither, most likely - and no one notices that he ought to be there, either.
Lynx jumps down the ledges that were set there for her, so long ago. Okay. How is this going to work?
As soon as the Executive opens up with his power, you let go of the cat as if you’re going to jump back to your own body. You do remember how to do that, right?
Lynx wrinkles her nose slightly, though she’s too far from Slither for him to see it. Of course I do.
Once you do that, I’ll carry you into your new body, and then you’ll help the Watch deal with the Executive.
With a glance at the Executive, who is still not doing anything, Lynx thinks to Slither, It looks like they could deal with him now if I let them know he’s there.
She can hear Slither snicker inside her head. No, you can’t. He’s more powerful now than he’s ever been. Besides, you don’t have the ability to go unnoticed like he does.
Oh. Right. The rest of the Society will kill her if they see her. Particularly Ms. Anthropy, who’s already done it once. What do you mean he’s more powerful? He’s not making anyone confused, he’s just making it so they don’t realize he’s there.
Wait for it, Slither says.
And then the Executive grins, and spreads his arms wide, and everything stops.
The Watch, and the Society of Sin, all seem to lose track of what they’re doing. Ariel, who hovers all the time when she’s awake, remains in the air, looking around her like she’s trying to find car keys or something, but Fallen Angel lands on one of the balconies and leans over it, staring out into nothing. Odysseus scratches his head, clearly aware that something is odd, but not what. Ms. Anthropy starts obsessively checking her ammo. Both of the scientists check their pockets and other places they may have stored things, as if they’re looking for something, though they plainly aren’t sure what. No one is fighting any more, or even paying attention.
Executive Dysfunction walks over to Ms. Anthropy, easily moving out of the way of confused heroes and villains. He puts a hand out to her. She stares at him, clearly baffled, and he takes her gun from her, smiling at her. She seems to forget he’s done it the moment he turns his back to her.
He’s going to shoot your team, Slither informs Lynx helpfully. And it actually is helpful. Even without Executive’s confusion powers working on her, the fact that she’s been stuck in a cat brain all this time makes it hard for her to see human strategies.
Lynx swears. She doesn’t have any idea how much time she’ll have to stop him after she gets into her human body. Do it now! she yells, and releases her hold on the body.
It’s not like that, really. It’s like being an astronaut inside a ship, with a tether that can connect you to the ship, and when you throw yourself out the airlock, the tether spools out behind you, but if you’ve successfully made it to the airlock of the ship across you, then you can release the tether. She still has a connection to Athena the cat, but she’s floating free of the body, and then there’s a dizzy moment and she smells Slither, her mind interpreting his power touching her mind as a scent, and then she blinks her eyes open and she’s standing up with a gun in her hand.
She’s too disoriented to hold the gun. She drops it from nerveless fingers, and stares down at her large, broad hands. They aren’t her hands.
But she’s human. She has a human brain to work with, for the first time in years, and she’s so used to struggling so hard to think against the tiny cat brain she was stuck in, it feels like her mind is moving a mile a minute now. She looks down at Executive Dysfunction’s shoes and she knows where she is - who she is.
Slither is smirking at her. She thinks for a moment that he’s betrayed her, lied to her, and then she realizes… no. No, he never lied. He told her he’d get her into a human body, and she, with the intelligence of a cat, assumed he meant her own… even though she knew her own had been shot in the head.
Everyone is waking up from their confusion, looking around. Slither is strolling over to the cat Athena, who meows weakly, and Lynx realizes she can hear it as if she’s the cat meowing. She’s still tethered to Athena, she’s in Executive Dysfunction’s body, Athena is alive and has a mind but she’s not recovering from Lynx riding her nearly as fast as cats did when Lynx had her own body… because Lynx is still tethered, still using part of Athena’s brain as well as Executive Dysfunction’s.
She doesn’t know how to use the Executive’s power. She tries to speak, saying, “Odysseus?” as Odysseus turns to focus on her/the Executive. At the same time she feels Slither picking Athena up, and then she knows. The whole plan jumps out at her.
Odysseus is saying, “Lightning Rod!” and Slither’s hand is on Athena’s head and she sees the whole plan, now that she’s got a human brain (and half of a cat’s) to do it with. Slither transferred her into Executive Dysfunction. She doesn’t know how to use the Executive’s power. Odysseus is going to want to take the Executive down hard and keep him sedated and unable to use his power, pretty much forever, and she won’t have time to convince anyone she’s Lynx because they think she’s dead and because jumping to a human was never part of her power set. And Slither will kill Athena so she has no cat nearby to ride. She’ll be stuck as Executive Dysfunction and be put on trial for his crimes, or just be kept asleep until she dies.
Nice try, Slither, she thinks, knowing he can’t hear it because she’s got two brains again, and then she shifts back to Athena and bites Slither’s hand, hard. He yells and drops her, even as Odysseus finishes his command, “Take out the Executive!” and Lightning Rod, guessing what Odysseus is about to say, fires his lightning even before the sentence is done. Executive drops, but Lynx can’t feel it, because she’s solidly Athena again.
Athena runs toward Odysseus, yowling. She sees his eyes go wide. “…a cat?”
Ms. Anthropy dives for her gun, which is on the floor next to the unconscious Executive, but Ariel, who’s been floating, bobbing around the room with no apparent sense of why or what she should be doing when Executive’s power was in action, is now awake and no longer confused. She dips down, grabs Ms. Anthropy, and lifts her into the air. Ms. Anthropy curses and struggles, but Ariel has her tightly.
Kage, apparently recognizing when the team is beaten, retreats, and the others do as well. Slither slinks toward the front of the atrium, obviously trying to sneak out before anyone sees him. Athena meows urgently at Odysseus and points her paw at Slither.
“Lynx?” he whispers, and then, “That’s Slither! Take him-”
Dr. Ray fires a paralysis wave at Slither, knocking him down to the floor. The rest of the Society of Sin are gone, but Executive Dysfunction, Ms. Anthropy, and Slither have been captured.
“You were supposed to have let go of the cat!” Slither yells, furiously, at her, as he’s dragged off by Man’o’Might, who is also carrying the unconscious Executive Dysfunction. “You wanted to be human! Why did you jump back to the cat?”
Because I was a lot smarter when I got into a human brain, and I saw what you were going for, Athena tells him, washing her paws as he goes past. It’s not hard to fool a cat, Slither, but when I’m in a human, I’m not stupid.
“Lynx?” Odysseus asks, again, more firmly. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
Athena waves her tail vigorously, before remembering that humans can’t easily read cat body language. She stands up and weaves in and out of Odysseus’ legs, purring.
“I think it’s you, but nod your head if you understand me,” he says, and she looks up at him and bobs her head, twice.
He picks her up and hugs her, and she nuzzles her face against his. “It is you! You’re alive! Lynx, you’re alive!”
And all of the rest of the Watch crowd around her, petting her and hugging her and honestly irritating the shit out of her, because her cat tolerance for being carried and touched by humans has run out several minutes ago, but she puts up with it, because they’re her friends, and she’s finally home.
***
Dr. Ray and Odysseus try to teach her to type. It doesn’t work well, for the same reason she never was able to communicate with Jane that way. They give her a simplified set of communication buttons where she can say about ten different things, which is better than nothing, and they promise her, they’ll keep working to find a way for her to communicate. If she’s lucky, maybe they’ll find a way before she loses the rest of her human mind. Or was that a lie Slither told her to get her to make her more eager to take his offer? She doesn’t have a way to know, because she can’t ask.
Ms. Anthropy goes to jail for her murder. Executive Dysfunction is, as Lynx had suspected, kept in a medically equipped cell in Watch HQ, drugged so that he can’t muster up his powers. It’s cruel, but what else can they do, kill him? He’s too dangerous. Slither escapes, but doesn’t return to the Society of Sin, and word is, they want him dead, so he’s not likely to.
A week after Lynx is back with the Watch, Odysseus brings her a flyer with a picture of a tortoiseshell cat who looks a lot like her on it. “This is a missing cat flyer,” he says. “Says this cat, who looks like you, disappeared the day you returned to us. It says to call someone named Jane if you’re found. Is that who you were staying with?”
Athena meows once and bobs her head. Odysseus asks, “Do you want to go back to her house to say goodbye?”, and she does it again.
And so the next day, she and Odysseus are back at Jane’s house, and Jane is stunned. “Aren’t you - aren’t you Odysseus? The superhero?”
Odysseus nods. “That’s me, ma’am.”
“And you’re bringing me back my cat?” She sounds like she can’t believe it.
“Not… exactly.” Odysseus sets Athena down, where she can’t resist rubbing her face against Jane’s legs. “This cat, who you call Athena, is actually our teammate Lynx. We’ve thought her dead for years, but it turns out, she’s stuck in her cat form.” Lynx wonders why Odysseus is explaining her powers like that, and then she realizes that maybe a cat lover wouldn’t be thrilled with a person who takes over cat minds taking over her pet, even though she’s only been Jane’s pet since she lost her human body.
“Oh my god. My cat is a person? My cat is a superhero?”
“She is, yes. She wanted to come back to say goodbye to you and give you closure.”
Athena rubs against Odysseus’ legs too, trying to send Jane the message that Odysseus is her friend. Jay pokes his head around the corner, and, presumably deciding that if Jane’s so friendly with that man, he’s probably not dangerous to cats, he comes out to smell her breath and rub faces with her. That makes her sad. She can give closure to Jane, but not to Jay; she has no way of telling him that she’s leaving and she’s not coming back.
“Oh, you poor thing… no wonder you always wanted the human food! I’m so sorry.” Jane picks Athena up. “I still have some rotisserie chicken if you’d like?”
Athena nods. Jane’s face lights up. “I had no idea you could do that! Were you deep undercover? Would your enemies have been able to find you if they realized you were a human in a cat body?”
Her enemy had no trouble finding her, and she has no way of explaining to Jane that she’d lost enough of her human memories that she didn’t remember the head-nodding gesture for yes until Odysseus reminded her. It’s all right. Jane brings her some rotisserie chicken, microwaved for 30 seconds to take the refrigerator chill off of it, and Athena tries to eat it slowly, to savor it, but it’s too good. She devours it.
“Thank you for taking such good care of our teammate, ma’am,” Odysseus says.
***
Now that she knows the real Athena is still alive in here, and could be restored to her own cat life if Lynx could just get out of her body, she wants desperately to find a solution. Even a way to jump to a different cat and free Athena, if she can. But she was never able to jump from cat to cat without going through her own body first. Without a human body, she has no way to release Athena short of dying, and she wants to give the cat back her cat life, but not enough to die for it.
Is she losing her mind? Is her intelligence dissolving, crushed under the pressure of being jammed into a tiny cat brain? She doesn’t know, and she has no way to ask the question. Dr. Ray doesn’t seem to have thought it might be an issue - he recognizes that maybe she’s lost some memories, but he doesn’t behave as if Slither’s warning is anything she has to worry about. She wishes she could believe that means he knows about it and doesn’t think it’s a problem, rather than that it’s never occurred to him.
It’s still so lonely living among people she can’t communicate with, but they understand she’s intelligent - mostly anyway - and they’re willing to try to understand her body language. And to make sure she gets chicken dinners, warm ones, whenever she wants. And they’re her friends. They talk about people she knows, situations she was there for, while she sits on their laps and they pet her. It’s better than living entirely as a pet cat, and she knows Ray is trying to find a way to get her into a human body, ethically, and maybe he’ll even do it before she loses her mind or dies of old age.
It’s not really enough. But it’s what she’s got, so she’ll make do.