Before the City Wakes

The Thicket of Solitude sat at the very center of Cervine Metropolis like a silver fist — tall, angular, and impossible to miss. Its upper floors caught the morning light and scattered it across the rooftops below, where hover-trams hummed along their rails and humanoid deer in tailored coats tapped at their comm-bands on their way to work.

Inside the fortress, on the sixty-third floor, Super Bambi stood at the wide observation window with a mug of warm tea he'd already forgotten about.

His red cape draped still behind him. His large eyes tracked the city below — the glinting windows, the pedestrian bridges, the parks where fawns chased each other between sculpted hedges.

He loved this view. He'd lived with it for years, and it still made him feel something he couldn't quite name.

His comm-band buzzed on the counter behind him.

He didn't move for a moment. Then it buzzed again — three short pulses. That was the city grid's automated frequency.

Three Pulses and a Dog

Super Bambi picked up the comm-band and tapped it.

The screen showed no message. No sender ID. No coordinates. Just a raw audio file, forty-three seconds long, tagged with a timestamp from three hours ago — 4:17 in the morning.

He pressed play.

It wasn't an alarm. It wasn't a voice. It was a low, rhythmic thumping, like something heavy knocking against metal from far below. Three beats, a pause. Three beats, a pause.

Just like the comm-band had buzzed.

He frowned and played it again.

A sharp bark cut through the room.

A golden retriever — a big, shaggy one — was sitting at the far end of the floor. He wasn't supposed to be there. The Thicket's lower entrance was keycard-only.

The dog's collar had a small tag that blinked green. Stamped into the metal were two words: SECTOR NINE.

Bambi crouched down slowly.

The dog stared at him, then turned and walked straight toward the elevator shaft — the one that only went down.