# Tanya decided there was no sense exposing themselves to more danger than they already had.

She gave their surroundings another slow inspection.

“Well,” she said, “I guess we’re pitching camp in this wonderful piece of space.”

K’hraal lifted his head and looked around.

Old concrete walls. Paint peeling away in damp curls. Busted fluorescent tubes hung overhead, most of them shattered, the rest long dead. Broken glass glittered beneath an open window. Somewhere deeper inside the building, water dripped with irritating precision.

The place smelled of wet concrete, rust, dust, and more dank than anyone should have to endure in one lifetime.

K’hraal opened his mouth, like he meant to meow.

Barely anything escaped.

Tanya looked at him.

“I knew you’d agree, boy.”

She crossed to the open window and lowered herself against the wall beside it, careful to keep most of her silhouette beneath the sill.

“At least there’s cool air.”

Outside, the night moved through distant sounds—an engine somewhere beyond the buildings, the faint metallic clatter of something loose in the wind, then silence again.

Tanya reached into her pack and produced a foil sachet.

K’hraal’s ears immediately came forward.

“Oh, now you’re interested.”

She tore it open.

Tuna.

His nose twitched.

“Yours.”

She laid it on the bare concrete beside her boot.

Then she pulled out her own dinner.

“Mine.”

The sandwich had endured considerably more hardship than K’hraal’s meal. One corner had been flattened completely, the bread compressed into something approaching geological strata.

Tanya turned it over in her hand.

“Looks like a road roller had its fun with this.”

K’hraal was already lowering his face toward the tuna.

“Hey.”

He froze.

Tanya pointed at him with the sandwich.

“Manners.”

K’hraal looked at her.

She raised an eyebrow.

“いただきます… Itadakimasu.”

The cat stared at her for another second.

Then he lowered his head, hunched his shoulders, and produced a sound from somewhere deep inside himself.

“Nnnggrrrrrruu…”

Tanya’s lips tightened.

She turned her face away and covered her mouth with one hand.

No.

Absolutely not.

_You shouldn’t discourage good manners._

A small snort escaped anyway.

“That never gets old.”

K’hraal immediately buried his nose in the tuna.

“Yeah, yeah. Eat up.”

Tanya unwrapped what remained of her sandwich and settled deeper against the wall.

The breeze through the broken window was cool against her face. K’hraal ate beside her with the concentration of someone performing critically important work.

For a few minutes, there were no objectives. No coordinates. No voices in her earpiece.

Just an abandoned room, a ruined sandwich, and a cat eating considerably better than she was.

Tanya glanced toward the black rectangle of the window.

Her smile faded—not completely, but enough.

“Long night ahead of us, boy.”

K’hraal kept eating.

Tanya took a bite of her sandwich.

Chewed.

Frowned at it.

Then looked down at the tuna.

“…You definitely got the better deal.”