Limitless Evolution As a Snake

I drift on, keeping most of me still smoke, just enough solid to move quiet. Down the hall, past storage rooms full of junk nobody needs, until I find what I actually came for.

Their little home office, and there it is. A physical terminal, an honest-to-God computer, sitting there like it’s 1999, humming quietly in the corner of a room that smells like cigars and mould.

I almost feel bad for them, almost.

[System: Oh mate, oh mate, look at this. They’ve got neural ports built into their own bloody skulls for banking, right, top-of-the-line stuff, untraceable, unhackable, dead sexy security... and then they’ve got THIS sitting right here like a backup diary. Absolute muppets. It’s like wearing a bulletproof vest and then leaving your house key under the mat.]

Old habits die hard, I guess. Pathetic, really. My uncles have all the high-tech, god-tier security money can buy, but they’re still stuck in the past with this junk. Funny how being cheap is what’s going to get them absolutely wrecked.

I creep smoke-thin into the keyboard, my body barely there, just enough presence to press keys without setting off pressure sensors.

Old Mate, I don’t know anything about hacking, so can you take over?

[System: You’re in, look at you, Mr Hackerman Snake. Never thought your boring past would come in handy, but here we are.]

I don’t just want their cash; cash is boring. I want their lives; I want their secrets; I want everything: bonds sitting untouched in some dusty offshore vault, crypto wallets they think nobody knows about, twelve million dollars worth of assets just sitting there collecting dust while I’m back home worrying about horse girl gambling debt eating my girls alive.

[System: Bloody hell, twelve mil, that’ll patch up the casino’s little racing problem nicely, won’t it? Maybe even leave enough for a decent kebab upgrade.]

But I don’t want it to hit right away, Old Mate i want it to hit when Channel is up on the stage. Can you do that?

[System: Ohhh, I see where your tiny reptile brain is going.]

Ouch, but thank you.

Channel steps on stage tomorrow night for her big fancy debut. Same night these two idiots are supposed to be paying her security detail, her handlers, whatever muscle they hired to make sure nothing embarrassing happens to their little pink assassin bird.

I want the money gone the exact second she walks under those lights.

[System: Done and done. Set it on a delay trigger. Funds vanish clean at showtime tomorrow; their accounts are gonna look completely normal until then, so they won’t suspect a thing. Then bang, empty as my mate’s promises after a big night out.]

I ease back from the terminal, letting myself dissolve fully back into smoke, drifting soft and slow toward the vent that’ll take me home. Behind me, two rich idiots sleep peacefully in their beds, no idea they’re about to wake up broke, exposed, and completely unable to pay the woman they hired to kill me, weirdos.

[System: Beautiful work, you absolute muppet. Let’s go home. I reckon you’ve earned a nap and a kebab.]

The vent spits me out right where I want to be, home sweet home, and I let the smoke pull back into scales as I drift down the hall toward the bedroom. I can smell them before I even get close. Cash and dried rain on the road, off Lyra, warm and electric, mixed with that sweet drenched smell that’s just Cherry being Cherry.

Both of them are curled up on the couch when I round the corner, some show playing on low volume that neither of them seem to actually be watching.

Lyra looks up first, one eyebrow raised like she already knows exactly what I’ve been up to.

"You’ve got that look," she says.

I don’t answer her yet; I just flow across the room and wrap myself around both of them at once, solid now, warm, tail curling lazily around Cherry’s ankle while my head settles into Lyra’s lap.

Cherry makes this little squeak and her horn stumps twitch hard, twice, and she starts fussing with the hem of her dress like it personally offended her.

"S-sorry, I wasn’t- I didn’t hear you come in. Are you okay? Did it go okay? "I mean, obviously it went okay; you’ve got that look like you just swallowed the whole damn zoo, sorry, I’m rambling."

"It went perfectly, I stole from my bastard uncles, and I’m fine." I press my snout into her hair, and I let that settle into the room for a second before I keep going.

Lyra runs her fingers along my scales without even looking, already used to this, already reading the satisfaction rolling off me like heat.

"Twelve million," I tell her.

She goes still for half a second, then just nods slowly, filing it away like a woman who’s already three steps ahead of me.

"When does it land?"

"Tomorrow night, right when Channel steps on stage."

Cherry’s horns twitch again, faster this time.

I rest my head against the curve of Lyra’s throat, flicking my tongue out to taste the air off Lyra, sweet fruit off Cherry. Savouring it, this is the part nobody sees, the quiet after.

"Tonight you two stay home," I say, "rest, get pretty, because tomorrow’s opening is gonna be a mess and I want you both sharp for it."

—————————-

The next morning I head to Dad’s warehouse to check on everything before the opening.

The warehouse smells like motor oil and old cardboard, which is honestly a nice change from whatever cologne my uncles usually drown themselves in. I drift through the loading bay doors, hovering low so I don’t have to deal with the concrete dust kicking up around my tail, and there’s Raymond, coiled by a stack of crates with a clipboard he’s definitely not reading.

"There he is," Raymond says, not looking up. "The man of the hour."

"More like the man of the three hours I had free," I mutter. "What’s the damage?"

Hansen and Harden are lurking by the far wall, arms crossed, matching expressions like they just smelled something bad and can’t figure out if it’s me or the trash. I don’t bother hiding the fact that I clock them the second I drift in.