Chapter 1 The Last Light
I was still at my desk when I noticed the time.
Too late.
After dark, the Civic Arts Foundation became a different building. During the day, it was all donor smiles, polished floors, rehearsal posters, and quiet promises about unity between herbivores and carnivores. Money moved through the place like perfume. Everyone pretended not to smell it.
The herbivores, like me, were meant to breathe easier here.
The wealthy carnivores were meant to feel civilized.
I glanced through the glass wall of my office at the poster hanging in the hallway. Adler. The play everyone knew. The one all of us had seen in school at least once. Here at the foundation, it was not just theater. It was a fundraiser, a donor event, a public reminder that art could make everyone look kinder than they really were.
I looked away from the poster.
For a moment, I thought someone was standing behind it.
My ears lifted before I could stop them.
Nothing moved in the hallway.
Only the monitors hummed. The air conditioner pushed cold air through the vents. Somewhere deeper in the building, pipes clicked behind the walls.
I turned back to the spreadsheet on my screen.
The grant record was still open.
Disbursement Authorization: VCAF Outreach Grant
Recipient Status: Closed
Secondary Routing: Settlement Review
Amount: 18,400
The payment should not have been there.
Closed accounts were supposed to be archived. They were not supposed to have pending funds. They were not supposed to be waiting to be redeemed. I clicked into the record, expecting some boring explanation. A clerical mistake. A duplicate entry. Something I could report in the morning and forget by lunch.
Instead, another window opened.
Enter Authorization Code.
Below it, a warning blinked in red.
Your IP address has been recorded. Unauthorized access will result in termination.
I stopped breathing.
Termination.
The word sat there on the screen, sharp and official.
I closed the file too quickly, then looked at the hallway again. Still empty. Still quiet. Too quiet now.
My hands moved before the rest of me caught up. I copied the file onto a USB stick, printed one hard copy, and listened to every small sound the building made while the printer worked.
The paper slid out page by page.
Too loud.
Everything was too loud.
My ears twitched at the buzz of the monitors, the air through the vents, the faint rattle of rain against the windows. My heart beat so hard I felt it in my throat.
I put the printed pages into my bag. Then I slipped the USB stick into a yellow envelope and tucked it beneath the inner lining.
I had found something I was not supposed to see.
And someone knew it.
The lights went out.
Not one at a time. Not with a flicker.
All at once.
The office vanished.
For half a second, I could not move. I stood behind my desk in the dark, ears high, every instinct in my body screaming at me to run before my mind knew why.
Everyone in Velis Port knew the stories.
Devourings happened in the dark.
I reached blindly into my bag and found the small flashlight I kept there. My fingers slipped once before I clicked it on.
A thin beam cut across my desk.
The screen was black.
The hallway beyond my office was black.
Then the light caught something near the door.
A shadow moved.
I opened my mouth to yell.
The flashlight died.
