Miss Blue & Mr. Pepper

Meow…meow…meow

The timely morning sonata of Loren’s feline overlord, Captain, woke her before the alarm. It was the same every morning, and she constantly wondered why she even bothered setting an alarm when she had a furbaby to draft her morning itinerary. Her days were looping marathons that made seven days a week feel more like eight, just not as lovely as the Beatles made it sound.

Captain’s morning meowing meant wake up, the sun was out, the sky was blue, and can’t you smell the coffee you set to brew? Then came the daily shuffle of a towel tossed into the bathroom, the desperate lunge for coffee, the “squish” of a pukey gift left by Captain overnight, the clean-up, a quick pee, and the blur through rituals of showering, skin-softening, hair and face taming, then choosing an outfit. Loren’s work attire was always a selection of seven recycled black silhouettes. She decided to swap her usual slacks for a skirt, followed by a daring spritz of her favorite Italian perfume.

You’re like a goddess, Loren whispered jokingly to herself. “What do you think, Cap?” “Do I get a rose?”

Captain offered a meow of approval, winding through her legs to leave his furry signature on her black tights before slumping into an orange pile of self-grooming indifference.

After topping off her caffeine and curating her podcast for the commute, Loren took a final glance in the hall mirror, adjusting her expression until it resembled a smile. Today I feel pretty... don't I? Then offered her doubts a casual shrug. With a quick "be good, Cap!" she slipped out the front door to conquer the trek to work.

Time was playing tricks, turning the months into a repetitive loop where the only thing that changed was the depth of the shadows. Loren’s true crime and horror podcast marathon only reminded her that she was becoming a bit too paranoid as she found herself questioning every noise in the dark and every stranger’s “hello”. Halfway through the chilling history of the Bell Witch, the narrator’s voice began to feel like a finger tracing her spine. She scrambled to banish the eerie ghosts with the brighter pop of 80’s nostalgia.

To help shake off the lingering heebie-jeebies, Loren cracked the window a sliver. The wind whistled and growled at the gap, threatening to swallow her music. But then something familiar. A summery scent drifted in just as the ghost of a childhood song hummed through the speakers. It was a dizzying, sweet concoction; the bruised-sugar aroma of smashed apples and cherries flooded the car, dragging her back to summers of legendary neighborhood food fights, Nintendo game trade-offs and the little red wagon that pulled the painted paperweight rocks the kids made and sold to buy ice cream. They were memories of pure, unadulterated fun. Not the hollow, gray version of "fun" she was enduring in her adulthood.

The scent of bruised apples didn’t just bring back the warmth of sunny memories, it brought back the dark looming cloud that is Steven. He was the neighborhood’s resident terror, an eleven-year-old giant among mostly innocent six, seven and eight-year-olds. Steven liked to pretend he was an elephant, which meant exposing his biological "trunk”. He’d chase the smaller children, punctuating urine "sprays" with the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun and yelling, “kiss my nose, bitches!”

Loren still remembered the day the sky rained yellow beneath the giant oak in her front yard. She had looked up to find Steven perched on a branch like a gargoyle, "nose" in hand, raining down laughter and urine. Thanks to a sick-day snoop through her stepfather’s "Adults Only" closet, a treasure trove of porn and forbidden comics filled with anatomical sketches, Loren knew exactly what she was looking at. It wasn't a nose or a trunk; it was a tool of forsaken oddities and unnecessary exploits.

The tyranny of Steven continued into high school, where his antics progressed from the neighborhood streets to the Home Ec kitchen. During dessert week, he’d claimed a whole apple pie by spitting directly into the crust when checking the temperature. When Thanksgiving sides were on the menu, he shamelessly "seasoned" the stuffing with an ingredient of his own. The entire class, teacher included, drifted out of the building higher than a kite that day. Loren, among them, a wide-eyed freshman, while Steven was living up his second tour as a junior. His punishment? A measly two-day suspension, hardly a sentence, more like a holiday for a villain.

Steven came from the kind of money that school boosters treated like a tithe, so the consequences that leveled other kids rarely touched him. While Loren and her neighborhood circle of friends were grinding through 5pm-to midnight shifts in greasy kitchens or hanging clothes like roygbiv robots, Steven was off wreaking havoc or rotting in front of a screen with his gold-digging cronies. It was a disheartening dynamic, and part of why Loren’s skin crawled whenever people assumed they were dating. They bickered constantly on the sidelines, in the halls, before and after the bells. While Loren recoiled at the rumors, Steven let them hang in the air like a really bad smell. Few knew the real nature of their connection outside those walls, and they had to keep it that way for as long as they both drew breath.

Loren groaned; the mere thought of him was a reminder that she had a pickup to make on her way to work. Why? Because the moron had been picked up by the cops while stumbling down the street in a monkey onesie after tying one on, and their boss wasn’t about to lose his “star” to a jail cell, however brief. Just tell him so stop drinking, she thought, as if that would solve his problems…or hers.

She’d been his reluctant chauffeur for a week, a task that made her consider quitting despite the reciprocity of their arrangement. She pulled up to a security-fenced estate tucked away on a rural road, ten minutes past city limits. The house was an architectural fever dream, all sharp angles and glass mimicking Frank Lloyd Wright, with half the structure swallowed by the hill behind it. It seemed a bit much for such a douchey dumbass, but he was good at his job, and sometimes nepotism is just a loud, obnoxious scream into the void.

Before Loren could even reach for the gate’s call button, the irons began to creak open. A man stepped through, tall, muscular, and dark-haired, with dimples that could kill. He walked toward her with slow confidence, donning a perfectly pressed, expensive black suit.

He’s lucky he’s so stupid charming, Loren thought, watching him approach. It’s the only reason I haven’t left him on the curb. She rolled her eyes as he neared the car, a polished silhouette against the rural backdrop. Cocky asshole.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he said, sliding into the passenger seat with a rhythmic, feline energy, as if he were being chauffeured from a spa day rather than a potential stint in county lockup.

At least he’s on time.

He leaned back, inhaling deeply, his eyes closed. A slow, appreciative smile spread across his face as he slowly exhaled “Mmhmmm. Is that the Italian perfume I like so much?”

“Yeah,” Loren muttered, her grip tightening on the wheel. Gross, she’d forgotten he liked that scent, a tactical error. “Good morning… Steven.”

He rubbed his hands together, grinning like a schoolboy about to set a fire. “So, what kind of fun are we getting into today?”

Loren kept her eyes locked on the road ahead. “You and I,” she said, her voice flat with indifference, “have two very distinct definitions of ‘fun.’”

“Oh, come on, El. All work; no play makes El cry all day. Live a little,” he said, reclining the seat with the touch of a button and propping one expensive shoe up on her dashboard.

Loren grimaced, watching the leather scuff the plastic, but she didn’t stop him. The last thing she needed was the boss breathing down her neck for ‘failing to bridge the gap’ with his golden boy.

“I just want to get through the day,” she said flatly. She pulled onto a turnoff that anyone else would have missed, a narrow lip of dust-covered asphalt on a barren stretch of freeway. There were no signs, no markers, and no indication that this road led anywhere but into the dirt.

Steven reached into his suit pocket and pulled out an object that looked like a sleek pen or a tire gauge. He began to flick his wrist, shaking it like an old mercury thermometer.

“What is that?” Loren asked, her curiosity momentarily overriding her annoyance.

Steven gave her a quick side-glance, his grin widening. “You are going to loooove this, El. I can’t wait to show him,” he said, his voice dropping into a proud, rhythmic purr. “I made my own sonic screwdriver.”

Oh Lord, knowing him, it’s probably something that turns bathwater into beer. Loren felt a phantom smirk tug at her lips at the image of him drinking his own bathwater, vanishing as quickly as it came. She cringed, imagining him trying to turn it into a formal presentation for the boss. The boss was a man of "particulars"; he loathed games and valued efficiency above all else, yet he still allowed Steven to press his buttons with an endearing indulgence. A "sonic screwdriver" might actually be a welcome, possibly chaotic, break from the suffocating monotony of their usual workday.

Loren continued down the desert road, a barren stretch of nothingness, until a guarded gate loomed out of the dust. The massive masonry walls on each side were invisible until you were right on top of them, their color a perfect, deceptive match for the surrounding earth. A stocky guard in heavy military tactical gear stepped from the shack as Loren inched the car forward.

She rolled down her window and held out her wrist, a practiced movement. The guard swept a scanning device over her skin, catching a beep and green light of approval. He rounded the car to Steven’s side, his window down and wrist extended with a casual, practiced grace. Beep.

“All good, Mr. Pepper, Miss Blue, have a good day,” the guard said as he leaned inside the shack entering the code to open the gate.

“Ahem,” Steven cleared his throat, his voice bright with excitement. “Come on, Gary. You know it’s Doctor. Call me Doctor. I’m the Doctor!”

Doctor Who was Steven’s obsession, his ritual for decompressing after a tough shift. The one and only time Loren had made the mistake of drinking with him was during a Christmas Doctor Who marathon. Four cocktails in, she had been toast. Steven, however, had stayed upright, reciting every line with fanatic precision while she faded into the cushions of his sectional.

Why did I stay? Loren wondered. Better yet, why had he covered her with a blanket, set a bottle of water on the table, and let her sleep unbothered until morning? Sometimes, the beast was a conundrum.

“Hello, I’m the Doctor,” Steven said, slipping into a British accent that was, Loren hated to admit, irritatingly good. .

The guard remained stony, but that did not deter Steven as he leaned across the center console, invading Loren’s personal space to get a better look at her, “Is that a smile I see, love?” still in his British accent. She tried to bury it, but a small, traitorous laugh escaped anyway.

“Aha! You do know how to have fun! And oh, the fun I have in store for us today!” He brandished his "sonic screwdriver" like a scepter, looking far too proud of himself for having finally cracked her armor.

He grew quiet then, the playfulness settling into a rhythmic, nervous habit. He began opening and closing the passenger window in a steady pulse as they drove. They passed nearly half a mile of solar panels, thousands of glass eyes tracking the sun, until they reached a low-slung building wrapped in reflective black glass. It sat on the desert floor like an obsidian monolith, showing them nothing but their own distorted reflections.

Loren killed the engine and stepped out. Steven took the cue, stepping out and smoothing his suit jacket with a sharp, practiced sweep of his palms, priming himself for whatever persona the day required.

As they turned toward the building, a perfect rectangle sliced into the asphalt behind them. With a muffled hydraulic hiss, the car dropped into the earth like a dumbwaiter in the desert, leaving behind only dust and the shimmering heat waves of where it was parked. Neither of them flinched. They moved toward the reflective black glass, their silhouettes merging with their distorted reflections before they vanished through the seamless entry.

A giant of a man, clad in black with a golden wolf pinned to his lapel, intercepted them the moment they stepped into the foyer. The space was a vast, cold expanse of glass walls, marble floors and columns that hummed with hidden power.

“With me. Now,” he commanded, already pivoting toward a room pulsing with floating screens.

The displays were a chaotic mosaic of the mundane: people strolling along downtown streets, children in parks, diners and drinkers socializing in restaurants and bars. Between the feeds, a holographic globe spun, flickering in and out of existence as glowing ley lines tethered the visuals to geographic coordinates. Loren and Steven followed him into the command center, their postures snapping into an alert, military-like stillness.

“Did you listen to the news on your way in?” the Boss asked, his voice disturbingly flat.

“No, sir,” Steven offered, his tone breezy and entirely without remorse. “We were jammin’ to the Beastie Boys and some forgotten neon queen from the eighties.”

Loren fought the urge to roll her eyes. She needed the Boss to see her composure, not her irritation. She wanted him to see a woman that didn't dull under pressure, someone who executed his will without question or hesitation. A valid representative of their profession.

“I’m sending you both to Indonesia,” the Boss said. He waved a hand through the air, summoning a new screen. “The dragons there have grown. They’ve developed an appetite for the population.”

He flicked through the clips. The high-definition footage was sickening: giant Komodo dragons, impossibly large and tearing through limbs like wet paper, their massive frames crushing cars and leveling houses as people were fleeing and screaming in the background.

“It’s AI,” Steven said, his voice certain.

“Why do you say that?” Loren asked, her eyes narrowing at the screen.

“Look at the hands, six fingers on every one. The clothing hanging off the mangled limbs is identical, unless the whole city was at a themed pajama party. And the blood?” Steven pointed at splatter on a crushed car. “It’s neon pink. It’s a deep-fake, old man.”

“You’re going to Indonesia,” the Boss said, his voice like grinding stones.

“Why? Are you really going to let artificial intelligence get one over on you?” Steven coaxed, leaning into the danger. Loren felt her pulse quicken; she hated it when they squared off like this.

“Do you even want to go to Indonesia, Loren?” Steven asked.

She didn’t. There was no glory in chasing digital ghosts. Their job was to police the supernatural, not the "super-artificial."

“Sir,” Loren stepped forward, her voice steady. “Our mandate is to maintain the balance, not to be the Men in Black. If this is AI, why are we even talking about it?”

“ARES!”

A feminine boom shook the foundations of the building. The air vibrated with a power that made the marble floors groan. The Boss didn't flinch; he simply swiped away the images of the dragons with a bored flick of his wrist.

“Yes, dear,” he replied, his voice flat.

“Quit trying to murder your children,” the voice softened, shifting from a thunderclap to a motherly suggestion.

In the heartbeat of silence that followed, Loren reached into Steven’s pocket, snatched the silver tool, and flicked it into the air. She pointed it directly at Ares…their boss, their father, the God of War himself.

“Expel-o, dispel-o, away-o,” she commanded, maybe having watched Harry Potter one too many times.

There was a sharp crack of displaced air. Where the God of War had stood, there was now only a steaming pile of orange and gold glowing goo, sizzling as it spread across the expensive marble.

“Uhm, El…” Steven muttered, staring at the puddle.

A feminine giggle echoed through the command center. “Serves him right.”

Steven stood motionless, his mouth agape as the golden substance began to evaporate. “Now who’s gonna run the place?” he pouted. The weight of responsibility, his greatest fear.

“That would be me.” Loren tucked the silver device back into Steven’s pocket, smoothed her jacket, slid a pair of black shades over her eyes, and with a sharp snap of her fingers, she commanded “Captain,” as her orange tabby materialized at her heels, tail twitching in a silent, feline salute.

“I need you to make me a dozen more of those pens,” she said, to Steven, her voice now carrying the same weight their father’s once had. She threw him a set of keys, “and you can start driving yourself to work now… brother.”

Steven watched, paralyzed, as a hidden wall hissed open to reveal a private garage. Her old Camry sat in the corner, now a shed skin. Loren ignored it, stepping instead into a black, armored Mercedes, Captain hopping in beside her. She shut the door, the heavy thud echoing through the chamber.

As the wall began to seal her inside, Steven finally found his voice. A slow, terrifying smirk spread across his face.

“You do know how to have fun… sister.”