Cat and Company by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page B

hole so deep that it took years to find you and pull you out.”
    Bedivere’s breath was short and fast. It sounded loud in his ears. “So?”
    “Bedivere, you had the worst luck someone could have,” Brant said. “Once you took that first no-ask contract, the events arrayed themselves to keep you locked on a path of self-destruction.”
    Bedivere realized his hands were clenched in fists so hard it was hurting. He tried to loosen them and couldn’t. “So I had bad luck. Or maybe I wanted it that way.”
    “No one dives that deep without help,” Lilly said. “We’re trying to find out who helped you.” She stopped in front of him. Not directly in front, but close enough for him to see the determination in her eyes. “Which reminds me. Yennifer?”
    Yennifer didn’t move. There was a distinct sound of a door locking, behind him.
    “That room will be emptied and sterilized. The lock will no longer open to your command,” Lilly told him. “You can have any other room in this place. I’ll even build you a room if you want it, but you’re not going back into that closet.”
    Anger touched him. Along with the anger came a craving so intense it hurt as much as his fists did. “Why don’t you sterilize that room, while you’re spring cleaning?” he demanded, nodding toward the closed double doors by the main entrance. “I bet it looks exactly like it does when I left.”
    Silence.
    His longing for escape, for peace, intensified. He ached for it. He made himself say the words. “She’s not coming back, Lilly.”
    “You don’t know that,” Lilly replied. Her voice was strained.
    “She’s with Devlin Woodward. She’s doing work she loves. He’s doing more good in this galaxy than has been seen for an age and he’s brought peace along with it.” Bedivere met her gaze. “He’s a better man than I’ll ever be. I told her to go with him.”
    “You thought you didn’t have a choice,” Lilly countered.
    Bedivere shook his head. “I dived into a hole that deep because that’s the man I am. That’s why she won’t be back.” He headed for the front door. “Sterilize the room. Strip it. Then I’ll use it. Not before.”
    And he got the hell out of there before he completely lost it.

Chapter Seven
    Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187
    It became a lot easier to look them in the face after that…mostly because everyone went back to not talking to him. Lilly looked troubled every time he saw her.
    The room where he and Cat had lived for over fifty years was stripped and the walls moved with Yennifer’s help. No one asked him for his help.
    Once the work was done, Bedivere kept his word and added a bed and a couple of shelves for his reading material and that was all. In the meantime, everyone got on with their lives around him.
    Time, the only reliable thing in his life, moved on.
    Eventually, he found he could spend longer and longer amounts of time out among people. He could even walk the streets and corridors of the city, letting the streams of humans and Varkan wash around him.
    The parks in the core city were a personal retreat. He had a favorite park bench where he liked to sit and stare at the ripples the fish in the stream caused as they fed. He could spend time there, disconnected from his digital core and simply…watch. He suspected that what he was doing was akin to a human meditating, except that he didn’t have to practice to quiet his mind. Simply shutting down all but the essential data flow did the same thing.
    His days were filled with exercising to rehabilitate, eating, sleeping and when he wasn’t tired enough to sleep and wasn’t interested in sitting in the park, he distracted himself with meaningless research into the mysteries of the Silent Sector. There must have been some reason why he had headed there, even though he couldn’t remember it. He suspected it was because he could be anonymous and unknown there, just like he