Apartment 9B was quiet. Too quiet. Not "empty" quiet—ominous quiet, like the air had signed an NDA.
Whiskers padded ahead, tail low, ears flicked back. "This was Mouser's original unit before he got evicted for excessive yowling and… unexplained glowing."
The door creaked open by itself.
Inside, 9B looked nothing like the rest of the building. The walls were dark mahogany. A fireplace crackled with unnatural blue flame. Dozens of cat portraits lined the mantle, each one eerily lifelike… and blinking.
"Those are surveillance portraits," Whiskers whispered. "The FFL used them for monitoring tenants' snack habits."
Then, from the shadows: slow applause.
Baron Mouser emerged, wearing a velvet cloak and stroking a rat-shaped walking stick. "Welcome. Took you long enough. Tea?"
I declined. Whiskers hissed.
"You destroyed the Vault," Mouser continued. "Very rude. But it doesn't matter. The real power? Isn't in the orbs. It's in the Binding Clause."
He pulled out an ancient scroll sealed with a pawprint in red wax.
"Any feline who controls this controls every lease agreement in the city," he said with a grin. "And soon… the world."
Whiskers leapt forward, claws drawn. I tackled the coffee table. Mouser hurled the scroll—but I caught it. Just as the wax cracked open, a brilliant light filled the room.
And then the ceiling lifted.
Above us was not a roof… but a sky full of stars, forming the shape of a giant pawprint.
"Whiskers," I gasped, "I don't think this building is from Earth."
He looked up solemnly. "That's because it isn't."