As suddenly as I had fallen asleep, I found myself now wide awake. I sat up, disoriented and blank on how I ended up on the couch. Had I crashed watching one of those RTS Let’s Plays again? I looked over to one of the few things in my apartment that I owned that was produced sometime this decade. The TV was very much not on.

I scanned the rest of my surroundings and noticed all of my things unpacked by Pave last night.

Shit… Pave.

A rush of memories far too embarrassing to reflect on flooded my mind all at once. I leapt up from the couch, the dusty blanket falling to the floor.

I rushed the short distance to my room, hand on the doorknob, before a sudden thought skidded into my brain. I couldn’t just throw the door open on a girl sleeping—any girl, really. Too many memories flashed across my mind of doing just that to my sister over the years, and I had paid dearly every time. I decided not to test such terrible luck on a highly dangerous, weapons-grade Catgirl.

So, I went for the second option. I raised my fist and gave the door a quick, but firm, knock.

Silence.

I knocked a again, calling her name.

Still nothing.

Jesus, I hadn’t killed her with my awful cooking… had I? Could you die from salmonella overnight? I didn’t know. I wasn’t a doctor—I was just a man with expired eggs and regret.

With involuntary manslaughter and criminal negligence slowly filling my head, I twisted the knob. I called out to Pave one last time, praying she was still decent.

The (now open) door revealed the uninteresting, and somewhat depressing, scene that was my bedroom. A bedroom, mind you, that was completely devoid of the Catgirl who had ruined my previous night, ridiculing me in embarrassing ways and eating my eggs that I was totally going to use for something, I swear.

I turned on the light and thoroughly searched the room, which revealed zero evidence that Pave had even entered it.

The hell?

I quickly scanned my entire apartment for even a cat hair’s worth of evidence but came up empty handed.

Had I finally cracked? Was this it?

The Cold War junk fumes, the isolation, the emotional repression, had it all finally tipped me into hallucinating military-grade Catgirls?

Cold War memorabilia—that’s it!

I rushed over to the table filled with the items that accompanied me on last night’s misadventure. I lifted the Laser Designator to my face and gave a quick sniff. The slight smell of ozone and burnt plastic trickled into my nostrils, proving it had been fired recently.

Well, at least that had actually happened.

I stood in the middle of the living room, sifting through the embarrassing memories of the events of last night.

There had to be a way to know for sure.

I stared up into the blue until my eyes wandered over my poor patch job on the roof.

The roof, of course!

I threw on some slippers and a hoodie and sprinted up the fire escape, taking the stairs two at a time. When Pave had landed on the roof, she’d created a kiddie-pool-sized crater of cracked concrete, there’s no way that was fixed yet.

I made my way up to the maintenance door and flung it open.

To my horror, everything was fine. Impossibly, insultingly fine.

I sprinted to the approximate spot where she had landed, and it was completely undisturbed. Besides the occasional pile of bird droppings, the whole roof was perfectly clean. I dropped to my knees. There was no sign of a quick patch job. Nothing.

I began to spiral.

All the memories felt so real. It couldn’t have been a hallucination or even a dream. My dreams usually involved stressful social situations I couldn’t navigate properly, not something like Pave. I unfortunately could perfectly navigate the ridiculous sequence of events that had occurred last night. But reality was telling me it was all in my head.

As I watched the sun rising, I briefly considered texting my sister to ask if schizophrenia ran in the family.

But just as quickly as my mind wandered to my new life in a nut house, it was yanked back by the sunrise, and the time.

My heart plummeted at terminal velocity as I raised my watch to my face.

6:45 AM.

Fuck.

I had to be at work in 45 minutes, and without my car it would take over an hour and a half to get to just the shuttle stop.

My previous worries about losing my mind were thrown to the side as I threw on some work clothes and gathered my things, all while pondering my new nightmare: losing my job.

I tossed a bit of food into Boe’s enclosure, locked the front door behind me, and began my marathon. I sprinted my way to the closest subway station. The next 45 minutes were filled with Olympic sprints, broken up by waiting for crosswalk signals.

With the good fortune of running into a coworker sympathetic to my plight, who offered me a ride the rest of the way to the shuttle, and the even greater fortune of a shuttle being there when I arrived, it was no less than a godly feat that I collapsed into my desk chair exactly on time.

My chest hurt. My side hurt. Honestly, not much of my body didn’t hurt. Thinking back, that might’ve been the hardest and longest I’d ever run. But I didn’t have time to reflect. Because staring back at me from the screen was the thing every government employee dreads most: an inspection was scheduled this week.

They happened randomly, but usually once every six months. And now it was that time again. I immediately began mentally bracing myself, random knowledge checks, administrative reviews, extra eyes on everything. No one ever really did anything wrong, but that didn’t make it feel any better having an inspector breathing down your neck while you did something you’d done a thousand times before.

I sighed, scanned my task list, and got to work.

What followed was a blur of writing down indications from panels, gauges, and meters, followed by replacing a valve position indicator lightbulb. Then a quick break: vending machine ham sandwich and an energy drink. Normally, I brought a slightly less shameful lunch from my favorite convenience store, but this morning’s unscheduled cardio session had killed the routine. My stomach would later offer a powerful commentary on that decision, sending me sprinting for the nearest bathroom.

After lunch: an assembly line of briefs, trainings, and presentations about the inspection, each one somehow duller than the last. I returned to my cubicle, slammed through paperwork, fired off a few last-minute emails, and prepped some work packages for later in the week.

I ended up staying three hours past my usual clock-out time. Pretty standard for most of us at the plant. With overtime pay as good as it is, no one really complains about putting in extra hours. I already had a decent salary, unfortunately, a large portion of my disposable income went to my hobby. Still, I told myself it was better than blowing it all at the casino like Bill from IT.

Once I was sure I’d done all I could for the day, I gathered my stuff, badged out, and headed for the shuttle stop. While waiting, something occurred to me: I’d been so busy I’d completely forgotten about last night.

Had it all been in my head?

I couldn’t exactly get on meds or even go to therapy. That’d be a quick way to lose my clearance. Another fun perk of being a federal employee in this line of work. After some thought, I decided to blame the whole ordeal on hallucinations. Probably some Cold War chemical residue leaking from the PEQ-1.

Yeah, wasn’t losing it, just huffed too many 1990s fumes.

As the shuttle pulled up, I made a mental note to wear a gas mask next time I operated Cold War relics. I’d need to buy one that wasn’t from the era itself, most of the surplus filters used asbestos.

I may be surplus-crazed, but I’m not stupid enough to give myself mesothelioma for the sake of aesthetics.

I’d sat through too many asbestos safety seminars to ever mess with that stuff.

I spent the shuttle ride scrolling through gas mask listings and trying to figure out which local towing company had nabbed my car. I'd start calling when I got home, where it was quieter and I could eat something, assuming I didn’t hallucinate anything else.

But as I weaved through the parking lot beside my apartment, something caught my eye.

Without a second thought, I sprinted toward it.

There it was. My car. Parked in my designated spot like nothing had happened.

I pressed my face against the glass: bag, headphones, pile of empty energy drinks, everything was still there. Untouched. My brain immediately began building a list of theories.

Then—THWACK.

A stinging pain shot up my back as something struck me hard. I yelped, louder than I’d like to admit, and spun around.

What I saw first were the ears.

Then the grin.

Standing before me, with the widest, most self-satisfied smile I’d seen yet, was the source of my current mental deterioration:

Pave.

“Pave reporting for evening muster!” She shouted way too loudly.

“How the hell did you get my car back?” I stammered, not acknowledging her previous proclamation.

“Request for mission details denied soldier, Those are highly classified!”, she yelled in her drill sergeant tone, while lightly jamming her finger into my chest, her grin still fully enveloping her face.

“Cl-clearance?!”, I managed to say.

“Correct, you do not possess the need to know required for this mission debrief”, she spoke like she’d said it hundreds of times before.

“Need to know be damned! I need to know if you stole my car back!”, I shouted back at her, jamming my own finger into her shoulder.

She looked down at her shoulder were my finger just was and turned her head back to me, her eyes darkened.

Shit did I piss her off?

I slowly started to back up.

“I-Im sorry I didn’t—“ I didn’t even finish the apology before her darkened expression was replaced by complete laughter.

After about fifteen seconds of her not being able to breath from laughing so hard, she collected herself, wiped a tear from her eye and saluted again.

“I tactically required your personally owned vehicle from a secured site approximately 10 klicks west of this location, using classified means”, she barked, snapping to attention as soon as she finished her Sit-Rep.

I may not have been in the military, but I’ve stalked enough MILSIM chatrooms and military threads to know what “tactically reacquired” meant.

“So you did steal it! Oh god what if someone saw you” I started panicking, with the amount of CCTV cameras in the city they probably tracked her all the way back here and were watching us as we speak.

My worrying was cut short by Pave giggling. I looked down at her and into her eyes.

“Come on Derek, don't ya trust me? No one saw me, I promise! I even deleted your vehicle from their records!”

I’ll be honest I didn’t hear what she said after she spoke my name. She hadn’t called me by my name yet, usually just some variation of soldier or private. My name leaving her lips made me reevaluate every time I had ever heard it spoken before. Maybe I could live with whatever form of mental illness Pave had been created by. But before I could think about anything else, a punch to my shoulder dragged me back to reality.

“I think I deserve a reward for such swift and efficient completion of this mission, don’t you think?” She said with a grin.

“Yeah, I think I could whip something up— “

“Actually, I was thinking something a little less homemade” she said while rubbing the back of her neck.

So my cooking is that traumatizing huh?

“W-well, there is a steak house not too far from here that my coworkers have mentioned a few times, h-how’s that sound” I said with a sigh.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about! Though I don’t think your current gear is adequate for the described mission” she said looking me up and down.

I looked down at my work clothes, they were fine looking, but they bore the signs of industrial grime and sweat. I looked back at her and shot back “you don’t look ready for a steak house either.”

“Worry about yourself soldier, let’s RTB and you can switch out your kit.” She said, marching toward the entrance to the apartment building.

With no other choice, I followed.