Aurora stared at herself in the mirror, eyes wider than usual, touching the blouse and skirt here and there. The blouse was off-white, a hint of reddish warmth that somehow caught the copper color of her hair; the skirt, falling halfway to her knees, was a rich, dark purple. Somehow, it made her silver fur that much more sparkly.
Jenny, the personal shopper, held out a jacket matched to the blouse’s color. “What do you think?”
“It’s lovely.”
“Wonderful.” The human helped the Amazonian mouse into the jacket. This was the most business-like of a half-dozen outfits she’d brought, ranging from casual to formal. Ted didn’t know much about clothes shopping for himself, let alone for women, but all the outfits looked stunning on Aurora. He had found the concept of Jenny’s job entirely ridiculous, but she was unquestionably good at that ridiculous job. How did she find one outfit sized for a woman Aurora’s height, let alone a full set? And all, somehow, making room for the mouse’s tail. They couldn’t have all been tailor-made in three days.
Aurora admired herself in the mirror, then looked over at Hammer. “This will look…appropriate in court?”
“You look better than half my staff.”
The mouse smiled. “Thank you. Have you looked into ways to compel Nanolab Sciences to reconnect my nanotech?”
“We’ve tried to find loopholes, but like I said before, the law’s pretty cut and dried in their favor.”
“Because I’m their property.”
“Because you’re not in their possession, and it’s damn hard to deny that flipping your superpowers back on while you’re in our custody would not be in their best interest.”
Aurora looked disappointed, but laughed after a moment. “No, it wouldn’t be.”
Jenny got up. “So, great! I’m so happy you liked it all, and as challenging as this was, it was a lot of fun to work with you.” She beamed, then hesitated, clearing her throat. “I’m sorry I was, ah, taken aback by the whole affair at first.”
“It’s all right,” Aurora said. “You can look at it this way: you’re part of history now.”
She tilted her head. “Huh.” Then she broke into her practiced smile again. “Well, ta-ta! Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything else, especially while it’s still on Ms. Hammer’s dime.”
Hammer crossed her arms. “Sure, let’s get her a purple Ferrari while we’re at it.”
“That sounds lovely.” Jenny winked. Hammer gave her a death glare.
As Jenny opened the hotel room’s door, she let out a short cry of surprise. Finley stood there, hand raised to knock. “Oh! Ah, you can come in, Chuck, while I go out. Great timing!”
“Yes,” Finley said, deadpan.
Once he shut the door behind him, he glanced around the room—Ted, Aurora, and Hammer—and laced his hands together. “We have a situation.”
“What now?”
“There’s an AP story just hitting the wires about the Dynamice Max models in the field, placed with customers, starting to rebel.”
“Rebel?” Ted raised his brows. “What does that actually mean?”
Finley had already pulled out his phone, and answered by starting to paraphrase from the article. “Not cooperating with experiments. There are reports of threats and even violence, but nothing on the record. Nanolabs isn’t commenting on it, but there are ‘sources familiar with the matter’ suggesting that the same thing’s happening with mice at the company.”
“You can’t really put much stock in anonymous sources, but that’s…interesting. Huh.” Ted rubbed his chin.
“Yeah,” Hammer said, “you can. Somehow people have got the idea in their heads that when a source is anonymous, it means they might as well be some rando on Reddit, but that’s not the way it works. You see the phrase ‘sources familiar with the matter’ in stories a lot because it means something specific: the journalist has talked to more than one person who they can verify is in a plausible a position to know, and the sources back one another up.”
“Oh.” Ted cleared his throat. “Today I learned.”
“So.” Hammer squinted, thinking. “Aurora might have been the first, but she’s not the last.” She looked at Finley. “Does that article reveal that the mice are talking? It’s public knowledge they look like humans, but not that they have speech, am I right?”
“You’re right,” Ted said.
Finley scrolled back and forth. “It suggests it early on, and then gets into a discussion with academics later about how the mice could express their non-cooperation. A Dr. TK, described as an ‘animal ethicist,’ is quoted as saying ‘if they’re truly capable of speech now, that opens a whole new can of worms I don’t think the world is prepared to grapple with.’”
Hammer grunted. “Damn straight it isn’t.”
“So, uh.” Ted scratched his head. “Does this help or hurt my case?”
“That’s difficult to say.” Finley put his phone away. “It backs up the argument that the Dynamice Max models are effectively people, so that’s good. If they’re perceived as dangerous and violent, though, it makes it easier for the other side to argue they’re still animals. Which brings us to the situation.”
Hammer lifted her brows. “Wait, aren’t we talking about the situation right now?”
“That’s the prelude. The situation is that reporters are starting to call our office asking about this case, and how dangerous Aurora might be.”
“I’m not dangerous!” Aurora protested. “Without my nanobots working, I’m just…this.” She waved at herself.
“Just like every other seven-foot tall mouse woman, yes,” Hammer said dryly.
“A reporter from the Chronicle asked about the missing lab tech.”
Aurora’s ears lowered. “She was going to send me to a place that killed Ultra models.”
“I know the story,” Hammer said, raising her hands. “I’m not judging. Much. I get the self-defense argument here. But you’re not an Ultra, you’re a Max, aren’t you?”
“I was an Ultra, but I made myself a Max. After…” She cleared her throat. “Growing.”
“Does that mean all Dynamice Ultras can do that? And to be clear, by ‘that’ I mean ‘absorb a human and turn into a human-mouse hybrid.’”
Aurora stuttered. “N-no. I mean, yes, b-but—”
Ted leapt in. “She’s not a hybrid. It’s just a matter of taking in mass. She could just as easily take in a desk or a table or a car.”
“Oh, well, that makes it less disturbing, thank you so much. What about a truck? A train? A skyscraper?”
The mouse tilted her head, then shrugged.
Finley made a thoughtful noise. “There’s got to be a limit on that before the square-cube law kicks in.”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I think it’s a matter of what other changes we could make internally as we grow. We’re not completely organic, after all.”
“Let’s circle back to what we can get in the press that makes you relatable and non-threatening. Do you think focusing the public’s attention on how easily you can turn into a mouse kaiju if you get your nanobots switched back on is the way to do that?” Hammer gave Aurora a stern look. “Because I do not.”
“What’s a kaiju?” Aurora whispered to Ted.
“A giant monster.”
“Oh.” She pouted, then sighed. “That’s fair.” She looked back to Hammer. “Will it help if other humans understand I won’t eat them if they don’t try to hurt me or my—uh, or Ted?”
“An argument that can be rephrased as ‘stay in line and I won’t eat you’ might not be the one you want to lead off with.”
“That’s a mean rephrasing,” Aurora muttered sulkily.
“We’re going up against mean people. We—by which I mean you—need to look as angelic as possible. No jokes about eating Ms. Stonebraker.” Hammer stood. “We’re going to work on a motion to get the trial moved up, on the grounds that the publicity around ‘rebel mice’ will be distracting.”
“And,” Finley added, “that if this is effectively a matter of slavery, it’s critical to resolve it as quickly as possible.”
They both walked to the door. Hammer waved around the room. “Also, we don’t wanna keep paying for this forever.”
“One question.” Aurora raised her hand.
Hammer looked at her, raising a brow.
“Now that I have clothes, can I leave? I feel…what is the phrase?” She looked to Ted.
“Stir-crazy.”
“You know that’s an extremely bad idea,” Hammer said, shaking her head.
Finley drummed his fingers on his arm, looking thoughtful. “Is it, though? If we’re arguing that she has the rights of a human, we’re arguing that she can’t be treated like property.”
“The prosecution’s arguing that she can be, and they’re the ones paying for the cops outside the room.”
“But if you say it’s all right, they’ll listen to you, won’t you?”
Hammer closed her eyes, expression pained. “Can you promise to stay in the hotel?”
“Yes.” Aurora nodded enthusiastically.
“All right. Let’s see.” She waved at the two to come with her.
When they stepped out into the hall, both of the officers gaped up at the mouse. “Whoa,” the thinner, younger one muttered.
“Aurora’s been stuck in that room for over a week, and she’d love to have the run of the hotel for a while.” Finley gestured at Ted. “Mr. Bishop can ensure she stays on site.”
The other cop, a middle-aged, balding guy who looked precisely like what central casting would send over if you asked for “anti-woke hardass,” gave Ted a hard look at that. “Bishop, the guy who stole her in the first place? No dice.”
“What if you hold on to Mr. Bishop’s car keys so you can be assured he won’t drive away?” Hammer gestured at Aurora. “It’s not as if they’re going to blend into the crowd if they leave on foot or public transit, now, is it.”
The first cop, who’d remained staring at Aurora with a gobsmacked expression, cleared his throat. “All right. But I’ll have to stay with you.”
“Seriously, Pelham?” the second one said, crossing his arms.
“Yeah. The lawyer’s right. What’s the harm?”
He pointed at the thin cop. “It’s your ass on the line if this goes wrong.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Do your best to keep a low profile, Mr. Bishop.” Hammer headed to the elevator in a group with Finley, Aurora, Ted, and the thin cop in tow.
“Sure, low profile with a giant mouse chick,” the balding cop yelled after them.
“This isn’t giant,” Aurora called back. “Some day I’ll show you giant.”
The cop narrowed his eyes.
Ted turned to Aurora. “So, we could walk around the lobby for a little bit, but I think this hotel has a rooftop bar that should be opening in a minute or two.”
“Rooftop…bar. For drinks?”
“Yeah.”
“I would like to see that.”
“Okay.” He pressed the up button; Finley pressed the down button.
“How well do you do with alcohol?” Hammer said, looking at Aurora.
“I haven’t had much, but I liked it when I had it.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She looked at Ted as she stepped into her elevator. “I do not, repeat, do not, want to come across any news story involving the phrase ‘inebriated mouse woman,’ do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The up elevator arrived then, too. Ted, Aurora, and their escort stepped on, pressing the button for the roof, marked with the name of the bar: “Revival.” A few seconds later, they stepped back off, into a blessedly open panorama.
The bar took the subdued minimalist look of the lobby and refashioned it into a kind of contemporary island style look, with gray wooden floors, rattan furniture, banana tree wallpaper and actual banana tree plants. It made Ted think of what you’d get if you asked an interior designer for a modern take on a tiki bar, sans the cultural appropriation. With huge folding glass doors pulled back, the inside merged seamlessly into the outside patio.
For a few moments, the space appeared completely empty, but as they walked toward the bar, a bar back came into view, a young man in a brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt. He didn’t pay attention to them at all, but a woman in a matching shirt walked out behind the bar a moment later, nodding to them. “Good afternoon. I…” She paused, looking up at Aurora as the mouse approached, but quickly caught herself. “Would you like a menu?”
“Please,” Ted said. He glanced back at the cop; he’d stayed positioned by the elevator, watching. Well, at least he wasn’t going to be insisting on sitting with them, apparently.
The bartender handed Ted a menu; he held it out to Aurora.
“I don’t know what any of these are,” the mouse murmured.
“What do you like to drink?” the woman asked.
Aurora looked down at her. “I don’t know. The only alcohol I’ve ever had was a few glasses of wine.”
“Oh! Well, hmm. We can try a base spirit that’s light, like gin or vodka or light rum, or something that’s heavier, maybe a little spicy or smoky, like a rye whiskey or a dark aged rum. Then you can go sweet, floral, herbal, spirit-forward…”
Aurora listened, entranced. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“I’d like to try one of all of those.”
The bartender laughed. “Well, let’s start with something light first, and we can experiment.”
Aurora clapped her hands together, eyes sparkling.
“Well, I can’t see how this could go wrong,” Ted murmured. She elbowed him.