Anticat

 "You really are the worst at explaining." The black cat muttered.

"Explaining is such a bore, they are all going to die anyway. You explain if you want." He flicked his tail at his team, "Go pick your people and meet at the designated location in ten days."

A moment later the five cats including PrideSun had disappeared.

The black one looked down at the collection of people watching the event and added.

"Nice to meet you all, I am NightSong of team saviors. It's our job to keep your planet in one piece. I do hope you will work with us to find five suitable battle humans? If not, I'm afraid team destroy will win again this year and your planet will become several asteroids." 

A human with the new station shakily raised a hand.

The cat flipped his tail in his direction, "Yes?"

"Why would you save us?" he asked.

The cat tilted his head slightly, "Because that's how FIghtFest works. Our clans have our battles on a single planet to keep from destroying the entire galaxy. This game is held every hundred or so years to determine clan ranks. Our win criteria is to keep this planet in a livable state until time runs out. You're welcome!"

"Why would you work with us though?" asked the news person, "Won't we slow you down?" He eyed the cat's huge powerful body.

The large black cat blinked slightly "Oh that, no, we need to bond with an inhabitant of this world to unlock our skill set. That is why cats keep humans around. It's just very few humans have bonding potential, and of them, well most have already been farmed from this planet. I believe your term is usually missing in action?"

The camera guy froze.

"Ah yes that brings me to part two. The strongest of you humans will be doing some tests for us to help us find the best picks. Do try to behave for us yes?" He purred sweetly. "The first part is simple really, physical endurance, if you wish to try out you will visit one of the five stadium here."

A holographic map appeared with five locations.

"One of us will be overseeing each location." He stared at the gathered humans, "Well what are you waiting for? You're dismissed." He turned and stalked back onto his ship followed by the other cats on his team.

The gathered cat slipped away in mass meowing to each other and creating a weird scene.

"Did all that really just happen?" one of the new reporters asked.

"Nope surely we are all dreaming." Said another, "We are all just having the same weird dream."

"Oh right." The cat turned for a last glance before disappearing into his ship. "I almost forgot the identifiers."

Suddenly a holographic number appeared over my head and I stumbled backwards looking at it.

221130228

A similar number appear over the heads of everyone around me.

The cat purred, "Do enjoy the benefits of our technology."

I glared at him as the spaceship closed and shot upward before hovering in the air.

"Why do I feel like we just got cattle tagged." I spat. "Dumb cat!"

For some reason I want to kill him even if he's on the so called 'save' team. I refuse to be treated like a meat factory. Maybe it's time to find those other cats? If I get on their good side maybe they will leave me alive on a different planet, would that really be so bad?

The number faded away and turned into a glowing line that swam down and formed around my wrist before vanishing at if it had never existed.

Cats are the worst.

"What the heck is this nonsense." I swiped my hand against my wrist as if I would somehow be able to pull off the weird invisible number.

I pressed two fingers against my pulse and fell back in shock as a holographic screen appeared before me.

221130228

World news: Trial fights

Locations …

I scrolled through the info of where each of the stadiums mentioned were.

So this was some kind of communication thing? How very alien of them.

The trials would be starting tomorrow morning. I scratched my wrist absentmindedly. Guess I should head back to base for now.

I shot a scathing look at the flying hunk of metal, or whatever it was and slinked away into the shadows.

Yep I am 100% going to kill that cat or die trying.

The workplace was in chaos. Well that was to be expected. Even if they told us aliens existed and they were cats, could they really have prepared us for being branded like cattle?

I watched the mayhem for a second and my lip twitched.

Yeah no, nevermind I should let the chaos die down first.

Plus, I glanced at where Ryan and the director were gathered with some other agents discussing cat physiology. They hadn't even gotten to the branded part, or maybe the numbering system didn't offend them as much.

Who cares if the cats were flesh or made of metal, as long as we could find a way to kill them. The sooner the better, especially…

I thought for a moment, what had that cat said? The reason they needed humans had to do with unlocking powers? That didn't bode well.

I tried to think of the worst that could happen with space cats, they suddenly all learn to fly? Super strength? Nah they probably already had that. Who knows maybe they can already fly too!

I shook my head, okay different line of thought, how do I go about disposing of all of them. Also what's going to stop more of them from coming. They mention clans wars, just how many space cats were there!

"Okay calm down." I muttered to myself and pulled out my phone and opened a web page and started typing code on it in Python.

Funny, I hated that my parents named me Code, but over the years coding had given me all kinds of coping mechanisms for stress.

A few minutes later a very poorly done version of space invaders started working on my phone. I breathed out and destroyed a few of the little cat shapes. I frowned yeah okay my drawing skills need some work they could easily be mistaken for blobs or light bulbs.

I went over to the wifi setting to recode my game into the light switches and freak some people out but paused.

"Oh what's this?"

I looked at the code frowning. This was a system I knew every piece of. I had helped enhance multiple aspects of it. Not because I cared about CIA data security, oh no, just my own data security.

Someone or something had changed a few fundamental aspects of it.

My lip curled upward as I messed with a small setting and the line on my wrist glowed slightly for a moment.

A line of text appeared, thank goodness the fur brains had decided to use our already established network and coding systems.

Entry building 6545HU – 221130228 8:53:12pm

Some of it was very foreign and unreadable though. Still I couldn't keep a smile off my face as I wiped my data from the system and wrote a virus to auto search for 221130228 and delete any tracking related to it. Then I added some code to create a false trail.

Spy tip: never erase the data completely that is ridiculously suspicious like waving a flag, oh no, keep a simple version of it that only hides what you want to hide. Then give it an error that you wouldn't normally want to be associated with.

I paused and set up a piece to make it look like 221130228 was into some weird hobbies and a huge fan of the pizza arcade place just down the road. Then I set it to always display that when I was here.

I grinned evilly, this might take a bit to learn, but a certain spark ignited in my eyes. Now, what other secrets are you going to share with me?