**The Basement GRU**

No one was hurt.

That, more than the bombing, was what felt suspicious. Lykoi, Ruh, Mango, Bird and Kafka decided to map the corridors and check for other survivors as Wolfe, RaRa and Dr. Whispurrs stayed put in case others wandered to them and the main garden sanctuaries of the subbasement.

Deep down a prior abandoned hallway, waves of warm air rolled out into the corridor carrying scents no one had expected to find under a university cafeteria after a bombing: old paper, cedar oil, beeswax, black tea, cat fur, lamp heat, basil, frankincense, machine dust, and that faint metallic mineral smell of enclosed places where too many prayers had been said without ever opening a window.

The room beyond was not large, but it was impossibly complete.

It was a little apartment.

All walls had been paneled in dark fake wood from some forgotten decade of American optimism, and every inch of it had been claimed by bookshelves bowed under the weight of actual holy books that had been opened too often, repaired too many times with yellow threaded library tape, argued with in the margins, and re-shelved according to a logic that only made sense to the kind of person who had once possessed government clearances and later repented of being visible.

One would imagine foreign medals hidden within carved-out sections of the larger tomes, but the heavy coat of dust on the suspicious Cyrillic volumes suggested that touching them with even a whisker would be traced immediately.

There were holy icons in the corners, statues of beautiful cat saints smiling gently surrounded by LED candles and tiny strings of fairy lights.

There were prayer beads from at least three different religions draped over an old desk lamp, a brass censor hung from a hook near the kitchenette beside a chipped enamel mug and a tiny decorative souvenir spoon from MeowMeowMoscow — the kind meant more for hanging uselessly on a wall among a parade of other proudly spooned nations than for any actual spooning.

A low shelf of tiny Russian nesting cat dolls, each hand-painted, each progressively more suspicious, hid among Orthodox crosses tucked beside handwritten notes in Arabic, Cyrillic, and near-broken English shopping lists.

There were Qur’anic calligraphy scraps pinned to the wall next to a laminated saint card and what looked very much like a robed figure printed over a Soviet field map of somewhere no one, ever, should be sentimental about during a time period the survivors worked with due diligence to forget as much as possible.

In the far right corner, under two humming grow lights, there was an indoor medicinal garden thriving with the smug confidence of plants that knew they had outlived empires.

Holy basil.
Mint. At least five varieties.
Something bitter and silver-leafed that looked like it had no legal reason to be growing under a university.
Something Bird recognized and decided not to name in mixed company — but absolutely planned to chew a leaf later if he could figure out how to swipe it carefully.

And in the middle of all of it, on a narrow upholstered chair with the stuffing coming out one arm, sat a very large long-haired gray and auburn cat wearing blacks, greys and blues, a battered pair of little round glasses on his nose. Trembling, his paw mid-count on his little wooden tasbih on his left wrist —

“…Have mercy on me, a Si-“

He had a prayer rope around the right wrist and an antique fountain pen tucked behind one ear, one paw on an open Russian hymnal and the other wrapped around a mug of tea he had apparently continued drinking through the bombing.

He looked up. His blue sweater matched his kind and startled eyes — pale, exhausted, brilliant, and immediately horrified.

He stared directly at Ruh. Hissed.

Then at Lykoi. Hissed, puffed his fur, and proceeded to stand on his chair.

Then hissed back at Ruh as he continued to back himself into a corner defensively.

Then at Lykoi again, as every hair on his body stood on end making him look like a cat Wilford Brimley addicted to static electricity.

His pupils wide, the mug dropped from his paw and shattered on the floor as he moved so fast his chair went over backward.

“Nyet.”

No one moved.

The elder, apparently very Russian, gray and auburn cat backed into the bookshelves with a speed that should not have been possible for someone that age, crossed himself with one paw and made a second gesture with the other that was definitely not Orthodox and not exactly anything else either.

“Nyet nyet nyet Nyet NYET!!!! I DO NOT WANT WEREWOLF SATANS ANYWHERE NEAR ME AFTER THE DEATH OF MY DEAR KOTONAK! NYET! NYET NYET!”

Bird squinted. “Do we know him?”

The gray and auburn elder cat straightened as much as his panic would allow and gave a small, suspicious bow.

“Professor Father Volos Deuteronomy,” he said, timidly.

There was a pause.

“No one remembers me.”

Volos pointed at Ruh with a shaking paw.

“That, however, is Marchosias Satan Werewolf black cat of deception and doom. Cursed last one to see my son, my clever and late Kotonak.”

Then he pointed at Lykoi and hissed with revulsion.

“Thanatology Loving Corpse-eater Werewolf Prince of Alarafcatistan Cerberus. Murdering Philosopher Prince of Murderous murder!”

“…My present assignment in this questionable literature is Naberius. It’s a job title, not a condemnation.” Lykoi groused.

The old cat simply hissed at Lykoi’s quiet explanation.

Then the elder, terrified cat stared at Bird.

“You. Glaasya Llabolas of the Superior. I have read your file, Nazi-stalker.” He sniffed judgementally. “…You…are almost okay.”

Bird blinked once. “You aren’t inaccurate. But I really prefer to be addressed as Bird. I accept the second title of Nazi Stalker — yet Nazi stalking ended when they outnumbered us. It sucks, my dude.”

Volos looked at Bird speculatively.

“Volos went underground years ago figuring bombing was inevitable. When any Warner is killed it brings wrath according to scripture. Like killing she-camel or fighting a Russian bear with paws only, without Kalashnikov: even if you win, you lose very much.”

Volos coughed then regained composure.

“Volos becomes like GRU in a basement like old text based computer game, but only eats Sodexo and herbs. Was sent to protect the Russian kittens from themselves…and he couldn’t save the one closest so he just sat here and prayed for the rest and taught who shows up anyway.”

He flumped miserably.

“You still teach…?” inquired Kafka, his rorschach fur blending with nothing.

“I run into basement, not run into walls. Helsea the Coroner is best student.”

“I understand after the…event where I lose my son. What happened is this: I read scripture. All Good is from God, all Bad comes from human hands. I realized this was very much truth.”

He glared at Bird.

“Angry looking Kotonak, I regret my human times of helplessness before God as a man. I focused on doing contemplations until God graced me with the removal of my lower human self.”

Volos coughed again involuntarily and badly pretended to clear his throat intentionally.

The older cat suddenly gained his composure and stood on his tail as if pretending to be a Pallas cat, stating with newfound dignity,

“My sins? Poof. Gone.
My heart? Numb as my toes!
Cats are sinless creatures!
My human form? He run away!
Haha! Like fruity demon he left sweetly!
Have been cat since 2012.”

He coughed again several times, then had difficulty catching his own breath.

“Proudly cat.” Then added with a growl: “Forever cat.” He glared.

The room went silent. There was something about the manner of his speech — not his accent — that felt off.

“He sounds like Fischadler did—”

Ruh stepped half a pace forward.

Volos hissed with such theological conviction that even Mango sat up straighter.

“NYET. Do Not! Fiend of My Son’s Funeral!” he said hoarsely, voice thick with an accent old enough to remember maps that no longer existed.

“Do not come near me, Marchosias. I know what you are.”

Ruh placed a paw over his heart with the solemnity of his own pir, grateful to avoid a handshake.

“That is fair,” he replied. “We intruded on you.”

Mango closed his eyes. “Ruh.”

“What? He is correct when you call me Marchosias too.” Ruh replied.

Kafka pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are not helping.”

“I am not here to help,” Ruh replied pleasantly. “I am here because there was a bombing and apparently we have found a liturgical Russian mole cat in the basement who hasn’t seen the light of day since Harambe* still walked among us and hates me.”

[*Out of respect for the early neutering and kittenhood surgical reconstruction of Ruh, no one said “Dick’s out for Harambe.”]

Volos looked offended enough to recover a little of his dignity.

“Nyet. I not a Russian mole. Go Away Demon,” he snapped. “I am a Russian professor with big heavy headaches every day. This Very Cool basement is the best cure.”

“Professor of what?” Mango asked.

“History Repeating.”

Kafka pointed vaguely at the frightened elder historian. “This is either going to be the most useful person in the canon or the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.”

“Do not put Volos in the cannon. I will bite if you try to shoot me like carnival clown.”

Mango whispered, “I really love him. His way with language is incredible.”

Lykoi very quietly snuck up behind Ruh, scruffed him, and removed him from the room entirely, giving sharp instructive looks to both Mango and Bird as he departed silently.

Bird approached the elder Russian carefully.

“Father Volos.”

“…Da? Angry Nazi-hunter Kotonak?”

“Your pupils are unevenly dilated and you are jaundiced by the skin of your ears—”

The elder cat raged: “Volos says Nyet! Is cave tan only — What else were you, careful demon? Toxicology liver doctor fiend…?”

Bird replied, “I can’t tell you. I have NDAs. But something between a neurologist and a nutritionist. What I can say is: human beings assign goetia names to injured Sufi polymaths and trap them at a cat college. We are not trapped by other cats.”

“Father Volos, you remind me of a Shaykh,” said Mango.

“I AM NOT A SHAYKH I AM A DERVISH PRIEST YOU INSOLENT ORANGE KOTONAK.”

Mango whispered, “I love him,” with absolute awe. “He speaks like an Awliya.”

Bird facepawed. “I am tired of taking care of old Tomcats from the field.”

“This guy is in a basement,” offered Kafka, helpfully.

Mango ignored ombudsman Kafka entirely. “…and You are Volos. I am pretty sure that means something.”

“Volos is nobody. Bah! Nobody remembers Volos. Except the Dyed Black hellcat and evil corpse-eater werewolf who maybe ate my son Kotonak.”

Whether anger or fear, he calmed as the old auburn gray cat’s gaze landed on Mango.

He squinted.

“You resemble an old, Tall Kotonak. Kotonak.”

Mango sighed.

“I’m not a coconut. I am Mango… Sayiddi Sir Professor Father Volos Deuteronomy. I am the Acting Alaraf Vice President Garrett John Butler, Musawīr Mango Creamsicle of the Mango Madrassa.”

“…Garrote?” Father Volos repeated, eyes wide. “I am not even from this school — I got trapped here after what I was forced to watch. I ran here and realized I could never show my face again. The food here is plentiful as Sodexo refilled everything over generously under the cafeteria and my student in the morgue has a microwave.”

“Helsea the Coroner is your student?!”

“Who said I stopped teaching. I said I ran into basement, not run into wall.”

“What is your favorite food, Professor Deuteronomy?” asked Bird, speculatively.

“This, you would not believe it, but razor tooth squirrel. I sometimes lure them here. Is shame, I used to hunt like experts. Kalashnikov on roof to mitigate PTSD from war in old days — and then? Bang! Volos told no Kalashnikov on campus. Ridiculous! No reason to go above ground. Reduced to Garrote. Then all squirrels get herpes, and no good for eating.”

Those with existing squirrel bites suddenly realized why they had not healed.

“You do not kill squirrels, you harm the students.” Volos stated authoritatively.

Kafka, who fed the squirrels, looked utterly blank.

Garrett Mango Butler looked concerned he was something “to be reduced to.”

“Why did he say that as if my name is dangerous and ignore my qualifications entirely…?”

Bird replied quietly, “My name is a weapon too, bro — but mostly just to commercial flights.”

Kafka’s pupils widened. “Why are people here named after methods of wetwork?”

“Why do you know what wetwork is, tiny Spanish Kotonak, and what method is Kafka…?”

“Dying of ennui,” was the deadpan reply.

Bird raised one paw. “So is mine. Again. To jet engines.”

No one had time to process that because Kafka was staring at Volos with the dead-eyed focus of someone assembling six impossible things into one very plausible chart.

“Those squirrel bites,” Kafka stuttered.

Volos blinked. “What about them?”

There was a collective, horrible silence.

Then Bird said very softly, “Why did none of those heal properly.”

“Perhaps,” said Volos, “some squirrels had plague of skin.”

“HERPES?!” Mango yelped.

“Do not shout medical terms in my house.”

“This is not your house, this is a subterranean Russian monastery under a cafeteria!”

“It is my house because I have lived here longer than most deans.”

“That is actually a very strong legal argument,” Kafka admitted.

“…Is Volos…” Mango whispered quietly to Bird, “…Malamatiyya‽…”

Father Volos pressed himself flatter against the shelf, eyes darting between the icons, the plants, the door, Bird, Kafka, and Mango as a whole, like he was trying to calculate whether this was a haunting, a raid, or the final consequence of surviving far too long without actual support.

Kafka replied, “I think Malamatiyya generally have Rida, not terror. He doesn’t seem very blameful of a cat…except to innocent squirrels.”

“You know Islamic vocabulary…?” squeaked Mango with great enthusiasm.

“Not voluntarily,” sighed Kafka.

Bird’s ears perked high and sharp. He moved through the little kitchenette with the grave expression of someone conducting an autopsy on an entire lifestyle. Tins of tea, jars of dried leaves, a chipped samovar that definitely violated three fire codes, and six different glass bottles filled with water of slightly different cloudiness.

“You need bone marrow, astaxanthin, collagen, vitamin D3…” started Bird.

He held one up to the light. It shined a little too silver and had grey and red sediment at the bottom.

“…and possibly chelation.” Bird gently held up a darker bottle. “Where did you get this.”

Volos looked up from his blanket nest. “From the cold mineral stream under campus.”

Bird’s voice dropped two octaves. “What. stream.”

Volos frowned, whiskers bristling. “The clear basement stream under full campus.”

Mango blinked. “There’s what now?”

Volos pointed vaguely through the far wall.

“Runs behind an old boiler corridor, under a maintenance tunnel, past a broken printer room, near a sealed brick place with little plaque of fish bones crossed under a raccoon skull.”

Kafka, who had begun writing halfway through that sentence, stopped.

“There is a sealed brick place with what.”

Volos ignored him.

“Very good water. Cold. Strong. Full of tasty minerals.”

Mango went still. Bird closed his eyes and looked at the bottle. Then at Volos. Then at the bottle again.

“What do you think those minerals are.”

“Healthy Minerals.”

“Yes, but from where.”

Volos made a vague dismissive gesture. “Old Alaraf Steel drainage. Is good for headaches, yes?”

No one spoke.

Mango’s ears flattened. Kafka lowered the clipboard. Bird stared as if his mind had hit restart into safe mode.

“Professor… are you drinking runoff from the decommissioned steel plant…?”

“It is not a runoff. It is: stream.”

“That is not the part of the sentence you should be defending,” Mango said cautiously. “This isn’t ZamZam water, Sir.”

“But Alaraf Steel shut down years ago. It is clean now.”

The silence that followed was so absolute even the grow lights seemed judgmental.

Mango said, in a very small voice, “I don’t think factories become holy when they retire.”

Volos sniffed. “This one had excellent iron.”

“How long have you been drinking from the steel plant drain.”

Volos considered. “On purpose?”

“Professor.”

“Since maybe 2013. Before that, more tea. Then the stream becomes clearer. I took it as a holy sign. Sometimes it runs with blood from the mortuary, but my student usually warns me.”

“Usually,” repeated Kafka incredulously, putting the clipboard over his face.

Mango whispered, “Astaghfirallah.”

Volos looked around with mounting indignation. “You are acting as if I licked battery.”

No one answered. Because unfortunately, that was now uncomfortably close to the working diagnosis.

Bird looked thoughtful rather than skeptical.

“That is one interpretation,” Kafka suggested.

“It is the correct one,” glared Bird. “Perhaps. But it is also possible that your lower self was not removed so much as separated by intracranial pressure and long-term toxic load.”

Volos’s face went blank. That was worse than anger.

Something in Volos had recognized the sentence before the rest of him could reject it.

And he hated that.

“Nyet,” Volos said quietly.

Helsea appeared from the morgue and glared at all of them.

“He’s been underground for fifteen years eating what looks like incense, tea, and possibly contaminated squirrel and you guys are the first to talk sense he listens to — he drinks Alaraf Steel tailings and leaden squirrel like potato chips if I let him near the weapons room.”

“Why does Alaraf have a weapons room…?” asked Kafka, expecting no cogent answer.

Helsea said, in the tone of voice used by coroners and kindergarten teachers when all higher diplomacy has failed, “We are doing the lumbar puncture. If you idiots can hold him still enough and you aren’t cowards.”

Volos looked scandalized. “In my apartment?”

“No.”

“In the morgue?”

“Yes.”

Volos stared at her in pure betrayal. “You are all insane.”

“That is not a contraindication.”

“I will not go.”

Bird looked at him. Then at the room. Then at the icons, the grow lights, the nesting cats, the little apartment built out of exile and prayer and old intelligence reflexes.

“Professor.”

Volos looked up.

Bird did not smile.

“Poison can be removed.”

Volos went very still.

Bird glanced toward the doorway, where Ruh and Lykoi remained at a distance, quietly loafed and bothering no one — two sins that had learned to take turns.

“But witness cannot,” Bird finished.

Volos closed his eyes.

He sat down very slowly on the edge of the overturned chair.

No one moved.

After a long time, he opened his eyes again and looked not at Bird, not at Mango, but at Helsea.

“If werewolf and corpse-cat stay outside,” he said, voice gone hoarse, “I will permit your barbaric cerebrospinal fishing.”

Mango blinked. “That’s… honestly very cooperative.”

Volos raised one paw. “If either enters, I return to basement theology.”

“That’s fair,” said Bird.

Lykoi and Ruh were relieved. No one wants to endure someone else’s hatred.

—

Finding a small enough trocar for the lumbar puncture was worse than the bombing.

The bombing had happened to the University; the lumbar puncture happened to Volos — and although the latter was far more sturdy, he submitted to it with the theatrical dignity of a cat convinced he was being medically betrayed by children and demons in equal measure.

Helsea performed it with competent brutality. Bird held the lamp. Mango nearly fainted twice but recovered enough to be useful once bribed with a juice box from the emergency stores.

Ruh remained in the corridor outside, loafed next to Lykoi farther down the hall in absolute silence.

The pressure was high. Of course it was.

Helsea looked at the numbers and exhaled in annoyance. Bird muttered something in a language older than his manners.

Mango asked if it was bad. No one answered, which was answer enough.

Volos, pale and sweating and deeply insulted by his own nervous system, stared at the ceiling.

“Well,” he said weakly, “that is embarrassing.”

“No,” Bird replied. “That is valuable data.”

Volos glared at him with the last of his strength. “I preferred embarrassment.”

—

The first day after was terrible.

He got worse. Not dramatically. Not in some theatrical exorcism arc that would let everyone feel useful.

Worse in the real way. Headaches sharpened. His eyes darted harder. He forgot where he was twice and who Mango was six times, repeatedly calling him “Tall Kotonak.”

He crossed himself when the fluorescent lights flickered and accused the vending machine of being a government witness.

At one point he looked directly at Bird and said, with complete sincerity, “Again, I ask you, Angry Grey Kotonak — What else were you….?”

Bird, who had been helping him drink water, froze. “What.”

Volos squinted through pain. “What else were you. No one becomes this for the first life.”

Bird opened his mouth. Then shut it. Then looked away.

“I can’t tell you. I have NDAs.”

Volos nodded weakly, as if that confirmed everything.

Later, when the painkillers and tea had worn off and the room had gone amber and soft, Bird sat beside the bedroll and said, very quietly,

“My nickname used to be Glaasya Llabolas.”

Volos coughed and pretended not to hear him.

“Human beings assign goetia names to injured Sufi polymaths and trap them at a cat college,” Bird stated flatly. “It’s one of this institution’s lesser-known pedagogical crimes.”

Volos stared at him for a long moment. Then, despite the pain, despite the fear, despite everything, he let out one cracked laugh.

“Yes,” he said. “This sounds right.”

—

The second day was worse in a different way.

Volos became meaner. Not clearer. Just meaner.

He accused the icon lamp of espionage. He told Mango his aura was “administratively beige.” He informed Helsea that she had “excellent coroner wrists” and that “this was not a compliment.” He demanded to know whether Professor Bird was “one of the desert ones or one of the steppe ones” and refused to elaborate.

When Ruh passed the doorway and said, very softly, “How is your pressure” —

Volos threw a spoon at him with surprising force. “Your face is still wrong.”

Ruh picked up the spoon and set it back on the shelf. “Good. Motor function preserved.”

Lykoi removed him from the area silently, then returned to coordination with Zahir and Bird on treatment plans, whether Lykoi was hated or not. He never came close enough to be yelled at except to remove Ruh from getting too near. He figured the best way to show kindness was by removing the obvious stressor quietly. Then lecturing. For hours. With bullet points. On why it is futile to win friends and influence someone positively who has already committed to hating you.

Eventually Lykoi realized Ruh was creeping near intentionally just to have more lessons.

This resulted in scruffing Ruh into a tiny radio room with an electric kettle, a jar of catnip, a gallon of ZamZam water, and a direct channel to SIS Supervisor Fischadler — in human captivity — to compare chelation experiences, with written reports slipped under the door by Lykoi and Mango-colored paws.

Wolfe still had not met Father Volos. A photo introduction resulted in riotous hissing in three languages about “Nazi VämpenWölfe” — as if the dear man could not discern stage presence from reality.

—

The third day, Bird and Mango found Volos sitting on the floor in front of the little medicinal plant corner, one paw resting beside the holy basil.

He looked smaller somehow. Not physically. Just less defended.

The grow lights cast a green-gold halo over the nesting cats and the icon statuary and the handwritten scraps of prayers and the half-hidden wards scattered through the room like casual superstitions in a very serious battle with himself and God.

Mango sat beside him on one side, purring gently, Bird on the other, not touching, letting Mango’s more friendly aura do its work.

Bird leaned in slightly. Not too close. Volos did not look at him.

“Your lower self did not leave,” Bird said after a while.

Mango purred louder in his own dhikr.

Volos’s ears twitched. “Nyet? I have not seen him.”

“Da. I have.”

Bird leaned against the wood paneling.

“I think his soul got trapped in static and poison and pressure and grief and never got to leave cleanly.”

Volos was silent.

“I studied you. Human you is kind. Hunts rats like me. Competent, caring. I think maybe you have been trying to pray through an injury.”

Volos’s eyes filled so quickly it was almost offensive. He looked furious about it.

“Rude. How Americat of you,” he said.

Bird nodded. “Yes. I am rude. I am a kind cat, but I am not polite or nice. Chicago is like that. Very Americat.”

“Chechnya was cold in winter.”

A long time passed.

Then Volos asked, in a voice gone very small, “What if human form was not corruption.”

Bird looked at him.

Volos stared straight ahead. “What if he was only…sick.”

Bird did not answer too quickly. That would have been disrespectful.

“Then God did not abandon either of you if you can improve.”

Volos closed his eyes. His mouth trembled once. Then steadied.

Then he took a breath and did not cry, which was somehow more devastating than if he had.

—

The next day Volos was worse in a way that made everyone tense and over-polite. Not dramatic worse. Just wrong.

His eyes were too bright. His attention snagged oddly. He would become very still for ten seconds at a time and then continue talking as though the world had merely buffered.

He had developed a suspicious hatred of the overhead pipe nearest the kitchenette and accused it twice of “remembering too much.”

Bird had taken off his glasses because Volos kept glaring at the reflection in them like it was a hostile satellite.

Mango was crouched by the medicinal plants, trying very hard to look as though he had not just been instructed to “water basil with better respect.”

Kafka had arrived carrying a clipboard and an expression of bureaucratic ennui so advanced it had become a spiritual condition.

Volos, wrapped in two blankets and glaring at a mug of holy basil tea as though it had personally betrayed him, looked up.

His eyes landed on Mango first. He squinted. Then his entire face softened in a way so sudden and so unguarded that it made the room feel private by accident.

“Ah,” he murmured.

Volos lifted one paw vaguely. “My tall Kotonak,” he said.

The room went still. Bird froze with the pen still touching the paper. Kafka lowered his clipboard very slowly.

Mango smiled, tentative and wounded all at once. “Oh. Professor, I’m not—”

Volos had already moved on.

His gaze shifted to Bird — without his glasses, younger and meaner somehow, all sharp planes and old feral instincts and no administrative softening.

Volos stared at him for a long time. Then nodded once, as if something had been confirmed.

“My Angry Kotonak,” he said.

Bird went perfectly still.

Then Volos turned to Kafka — standing there exactly as Kafka always stood, as if prepared to scream internally then file a complaint against God while still showing due procedural deference.

Volos peered at him over the rim of his mug. Made a little approving sound.

“My Ombudsman Kotonak,” he said.

Kafka blinked once. Then twice. Then: “I don’t know whether that is flattering or actionable.”

No one laughed.

Because now everyone was thinking the same terrible thing: that Volos’s mind was gone and he was calling everyone by the name of his dead son.

Mango was the first to say it. “Professor.”

Bird took one careful step closer. “Who do you think we are.”

Volos frowned and made a vague annoyed gesture. “Cats.”

“No, I mean—”

“You are all cats. Do not make me repeat the obvious taxonomy because you people went to American school.”

Mango said very quietly, “Do you think we are your son.”

Volos stared at him with profound offense. “My son?”

Then he narrowed his eyes. “I am not old enough to have son your advanced age.”

Bird started uncontrollable laughter. Mango looked utterly flattened.

Then from the doorway, in the flat funereal voice of someone who had waited far too long to become useful, Lykoi said,

“He is not confusing you with the dead.”

Everyone turned.

Lykoi was leaning against the frame in an old flannel shirt, expression unreadable as tax law.

Volos saw him and immediately scowled. “Corpse-eater.”

Lykoi ignored him.

“This cat is Russian.”

Bird stared. “Yes? So what…?”

“I wish I had taught you to respect me,” Lykoi sighed to Bird. “Russian cat is not saying you are the same cat as dead son cat. He is saying you are now his.”

Silence. Not one of them moved.

Mango blinked. “What…?”

Then, with the same detached calm one might use to identify a body, Lykoi said,

“He never named the one he lost. He called him Kotonak. That means Kitten. He is a father and he is calling you kittens.”

Volos had gone still. No one looked at him. No one dared.

“He only ever called his son ‘my cat.’”

That landed so hard the room seemed to physically dim around it.

Bird sat down very slowly. Kafka lowered his clipboard entirely.

Bird looked at Volos with the expression of someone realizing a patient had been speaking correctly the whole time and everyone else had simply been too American to hear it.

Mango looked openly devastated. “How do you know Russian, Lykoi?”

“I understand more than I wish to. Do not ask me again.” Lykoi glared from his one visible eye. “It hurts my blood to speak it. I would rather speak academic High German in the mode and methodology of the great Schopenhauer and the original Franz Kafka.”

Kafka looked like someone had slapped him.

Lykoi turned back toward Volos — then leaped out of the room as soon as Volos coughed again.

The old auburn and gray cat in blue was staring into his tea, ears twitching once, twice, as though the room had become too loud in some frequency no one else could hear.

Mango took one cautious step forward. “Professor?”

Volos did not look up.

Then, with surprising tenderness for someone built like a nervous wardrobe, Mango asked,

“Am I… acceptable, then?”

Volos’s ears tilted toward him. He took a sip of tea. Thought about it. Then muttered into the steam,

“You are too tall. But yes.”

Mango sat down on the floor immediately.

Bird made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a collapse.

Volos glanced toward Bird. Without looking directly at him: “You also are too angry.”

Bird leaned back against the wall. “That’s fair. I am excellent at anger. Helps kill rats.”

Volos finally looked at Kafka.

“You are bureaucratic and exasperated in way that pleases God.”

“That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, I think. Thank you for not being weird and Sufi at me,” replied Kafka, to the horror of Mango and the amusement of Bird.

—

The cannabis room was technically not called the cannabis room.

Officially it was a “sensory regulation and plant medicine annex” funded by three contradictory grants, one wellness initiative, and at least one dean who had absolutely lied on paperwork.

Everyone called it the cannabis room because everyone at Alaraf had given up on pretending institutional language was a moral force.

Volos refused it twice. The third time he asked only one question.

“Will wolf and corpse-cat be inside.”

“No,” said Bird.

Volos considered. Then narrowed his eyes. “If this is incense, then we will see what it reveals. If it is trick, God will judge you before me.”

“That seems fair.”

Volos pointed one claw. “I am not forgiving anyone.”

“No one asked you to.”

“I am not reconciling.”

“God forbid.”

“I am not trusting Marchosias.”

“Extremely sensible.”

“I am not trusting the corpse-eater.”

“Also understandable.”

Volos lowered his paw. “Then I will sit.”

The room was dim and warm and full of quiet. No fluorescents. No sharp corners. Soft lamps. Cushions no one admitted to owning. A low vent humming like distant rain. A ceramic burner with resin incense giving off a clean old smell that did not ask anything of him. A tray with basil tea. A little fan turning lazily in the corner. Green things. Breathing room.

Volos stood in the doorway for a long time. Then stepped inside. Then stopped.

Then looked around with the expression of someone discovering that maybe God had not only remained in catacombs and liturgy and basement vegetables, but had also — against all propriety — made provision in a room funded by a suspicious grant committee.

Bird sat down on one cushion. Patted the one across from him.

Volos stared. Then, slowly, sat. His paws rested on his knees. He looked deeply annoyed to find himself comfortable.

Bird waited.

Volos looked at the incense. Then the tea. Then the low light. Then Bird.

“You call this meditation,” he said.

Bird shrugged.

Volos looked away. After a while:

“This is just sitting where God can still find you.”

Bird did not answer. There was nothing to add.

For the first time since they had found him, Volos’s eyes stopped darting.

Not entirely. Not forever. But enough.

Enough to notice. Enough to matter. Enough for his breathing to even out. Enough for the room to stop looking like a trap. Enough for the old priest-professor-basement-survivor-cat to sit in silence without immediately interpreting it as threat.

Outside, down the corridor, Ruh and Lykoi remained loafed, likely praying. Neither entered. Neither spoke. Neither was forgiven. That was not what this was.

Inside, Volos held the coconut water in both paws and stared into it as if reading the weather.

After a long while, without looking up:

“Poison can be removed.”

Bird glanced over. Volos’s expression did not change.

“Witness cannot,” he finished.

Bird nodded once. “Yes.”

Volos took another sip. Then, after a very long silence, in the softest voice anyone had yet heard from him:

“But perhaps being a witness can be survived.”

The room stayed quiet.

Volos frowned into his tea. “Do not make this sentimental.”

Then, almost too quietly to hear:

“Too late for that.”

—

Later, Lykoi found the old copy machine in the hallway outside the apartment — the one no one had noticed because Alaraf had a way of hiding entire administrative ecosystems in plain sight.

He opened it. Pulled out one blank page. Set it aside.

Then he took another piece of paper still inside the copier and, with one of the pencils from Volos’s desk, quickly drew two stick figures holding up a fur coat with little cat ears on the hood.

Then he switched the pages.

Then he drew a rough little version of Volos on the paper still in the copier.

Then, with eerie solemnity, he shoved that page down under the glass.

Mango leaned over to look and immediately regretted understanding.

“Oh,” he said.

Volos’s tail lashed. Then stopped. Then lashed again.

Then, very quietly: “I said you should have let me stay buried.”

No one agreed.

Because once again, in the subbasement of Alaraf, beneath the bombing and the books and the plants and all the little Russian nesting cat dolls and all the things no one had survived cleanly enough to name directly, something had been witnessed.

So they did what cats do.

They stayed.

—

*The Chronicals of Alaraf*