DAYS SURVIVED: 7
MASS: 8.3 grams
Kai found the first carved stone during a hunt, half-buried in hardpack near the border of what he'd started thinking of as his territory.
At first he thought it was just a rock. Darker than the surrounding stone, smooth where everything else was rough. But when he dug it out—claws scraping away compacted sand that felt like it had been undisturbed for centuries—he saw the patterns.
Too regular to be natural. Too deliberate to be random erosion.
Geometric lines carved into all six faces. Circles within circles on one side. Angular spirals on another. Symbols that meant nothing to him but clearly meant something to whoever had made them.
UNKNOWN ARTIFACT DETECTED
Origin: Indeterminate
Age: Significant (estimated 8,000-12,000 years based on mineral deposits)
Purpose: Unknown
Recommendation: Further investigation warranted
"Something made this," Kai whispered, turning the stone over in his paws. "Something with hands. Or tools. Something smart."
He looked around the tunnel with new eyes. Were these passages natural? Or dug? The walls were smooth in places, rough in others. The angles sometimes felt too precise, the intersections too planned.
Had this place been built?
World Cats were extinct for three thousand years, according to the genetic memory. But what if something else had lived here before that? Something that carved stones and dug cities and then... disappeared?
He tucked the stone into a corner of his territory. Marked it with his scent—a territorial claim, but also something more. This mattered. This was important. He couldn't say why, but the genetic memory was whispering urgency at the edge of his consciousness.
Remember. Record. Preserve.
Over the next three days, he found four more stones.
Each one different but clearly related. Same style. Same age. Same careful craftsmanship. He brought them back to his den one by one, laying them out in a line against the wall where he could study them.
Stone 1: Concentric circles with a gap at the top. Like a target. Or a warning. The gap pointed upward, toward the surface, and the circles got tighter as they moved inward.
Stone 2: Crossed lines with dots at the intersections. Seven dots total, arranged in a pattern that tickled something in his memory. Constellation? Map? Counting system?
Stone 3: Spirals that made his eyes hurt if he looked too long. The pattern was too complex, the curves too precise. Meant for different eyes? Different minds? Or maybe eyes that could see in spectrums he couldn't?
Stone 4: Waves. Parallel lines that curved and broke, curved and broke. Almost like water. Almost like—
Oh.
Kai touched the stone with one claw, tracing the wave pattern.
"Water," he said aloud. "You're showing water. Floods."
The genetic memory had been whispering about seasonal patterns since he'd arrived. Dry season. Wet season. The underground river systems that appeared and vanished with predictable regularity. He'd been so focused on immediate survival that he hadn't paid attention to the timeline.
But someone else had. Someone who'd lived here long enough to map the floods. To mark them as dangerous.
Stone 5: Sharp angles. Spikes radiating from a center point. Aggressive. Dangerous-looking. Kai ran his paw over the grooves and felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
This wasn't just art. This was communication.
"You tried to leave a message," he told the stones, his voice quiet in the enclosed space. "You knew you were dying. You wanted someone to know you existed."
He touched each one carefully, claws retracting so he wouldn't scratch the ancient surfaces.
"I see you. I know you were here. I'll remember."
The next day, he found Stone 6 near a surface access point—one of the shafts where heat bled down from above and the air tasted different, dry and hostile.
This one made his skin crawl.
Concentric circles again, like Stone 1. But this time the gap was at the bottom. And in the center, something that looked organic. Reaching. Growing. Branching like roots or veins or the spread of infection.
He stared at it for a long time, the genetic memory churning with pattern recognition protocols, trying to match this symbol to something in the ancient databases coded into his DNA.
Nothing. Or nothing clear. Just a feeling of wrongness. Of threat.
He took it back to his den. Added it to the others.
That night, he couldn't sleep. The pattern kept bothering him, pulling at his attention. Circles with a gap. Where had he seen that before?
Then it hit him.
Stone 1: Gap at the top. Stone 6: Gap at the bottom.
He arranged them side by side. The gap in Stone 1 pointed up, toward the surface, toward the open air and sky. Danger from above.
The gap in Stone 6 pointed down, toward the deeper tunnels, toward the places where water collected and pressure built. Danger from below.
"They're warning markers," he breathed. "You were marking danger zones."
He looked at where he'd found Stone 6. Near the surface access, where heat came down in waves. Where larger predators could descend from above. Where something could reach down into the tunnels and pull you out.
He looked at where he'd found Stone 1. Near a deep vertical shaft that descended into darkness so complete even his enhanced vision couldn't penetrate it. Where something could come from above. Or where you could fall and never stop falling.
"You weren't just recording. You were warning. Warning whoever came after."
The spirals. The waves. The spikes. Each one meant something. A threat. A danger. A way to die.
"What happened to you?" he asked the stones. "What killed you all?"
The stones didn't answer. But he had a terrible feeling he was going to find out.
DAYS SURVIVED: 10
Kai spent the next two days repositioning his den. Away from the vertical shaft. Away from the surface access. Somewhere the stones didn't mark as dangerous.
He moved methodically, shuttling his cached food first, then his moss garden—he'd discovered that certain fungal growths held water, and he'd started cultivating them near his sleeping area. Small things. Comfort things. Things that made survival feel less like drowning.
The stones came last. He carried them one at a time, placing them carefully in his new den, arranging them in order of discovery.
Six warnings from a vanished people.
He was studying them when the genetic memory pinged with something new.
SEASONAL PATTERN DETECTED
Analysis: Water table fluctuation consistent with major flooding event
Frequency: Approximately every 180 days
Last occurrence: Unknown (pre-arrival)
Next occurrence: Estimated 170 days from current date
Threat level: EXTREME
One hundred and seventy days. Roughly six months.
Kai looked at Stone 4. The waves.
"You tried to warn me," he said softly. "The floods are coming. That's what killed you, isn't it?"
But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't quite right. The genetic memory was showing him something else. Survival protocols activating. Emergency response patterns.
World Cats didn't drown. They adapted. They survived.
Unless—
He looked at Stone 6 again. The organic shape in the center. Reaching. Growing.
"It's not just water," he whispered. "The floods bring something else. Something that hunts in the chaos. Something that feeds on everything trying to escape."
The stones suddenly felt heavier. More urgent.
The civilization that had carved these—they hadn't just drowned. They'd been hunted while drowning. Picked off. Eaten. Exterminated.
The floods weren't the danger. They were the delivery mechanism.
WARNING: Long-term survival strategy required
Recommendation: Establish high-ground position before flooding begins
Secondary recommendation: Increase mass and capabilities rapidly
Tertiary recommendation: Consider colony establishment for resource pooling
Colony. The word triggered something in the genetic memory. Images of World Cats working together. Not quite social, but coordinated. Cooperative when necessary.
And breeding. The ability to create specialized offspring. Helpers. Extensions of self.
He wasn't ready for that. Not yet. The idea of creating life when he could barely sustain his own felt presumptuous. Dangerous.
But the genetic memory disagreed. It showed him the math. Survival probability as a lone individual: 34%. Survival probability with a small colony: 73%.
"One hundred and seventy days," Kai said to his stones. "Six months to prepare for something that killed an entire civilization. No pressure."
He curled up in his new den, surrounded by warnings he only half understood, and tried to sleep.
The dreams were different that night.
Not Chicago. Not Mom. Not the parking lot or the lottery ticket.
He dreamed of the vanished civilization. Saw them in flashes, incomplete images pulled from the stones themselves or from some deeper memory coded into the bedrock. Small creatures like him. Clever. Tool-users. Building something in the tunnels.
Building and surviving and thriving for generations.
Until the floods came.
He saw the water rising. Saw them fleeing to high ground. Saw something else rising with the water. Shapes in the dark. Hunting.
He saw the stones being carved in desperate haste. Final messages. Final warnings.
We were here. We tried. Learn from our failure.
Kai woke gasping, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"I'll learn," he promised the empty den. "I'll do better. I'll survive what killed you."
He didn't know if he believed it. But he said it anyway, because false confidence was better than true despair, and despair was a luxury he couldn't afford.
Outside, in the tunnels he was slowly mapping, the water table began its imperceptible drop. The first stage of a cycle that would end in flood.
One hundred and seventy days.
The countdown had started.
DAYS SURVIVED: 12
MASS: 11.4 grams
Kai found Stone 7 in a collapsed section of tunnel he'd been avoiding—the ceiling was unstable, liable to come down if you breathed on it wrong. But the scent markers were strange there. Old. Different from anything else he'd encountered.
He went in carefully, placing each paw with exaggerated precision, testing weight before committing. The tunnel was a graveyard of collapses, some ancient and others recent. Stone dust hung in the air like fog.
The stone sat in a small chamber at the end, placed deliberately on a raised platform of fitted rocks. Not hidden. Displayed.
This one was larger than the others. Heavier. More detailed.
One face showed the concentric circles again—but now with multiple gaps. Top, bottom, sides. Danger from all directions. The other faces showed progressively more complex images.
Kai studied them one by one:
Face 2: The organic growth from Stone 6, but larger. More detailed. It had limbs now. Segmented. Predatory.
Face 3: Small figures—dozens of them—fleeing upward. Running from the growth-shape. Some figures were crossed out. Dead.
Face 4: A single figure, larger than the others, standing alone. Above it, a symbol he didn't recognize. Below it, the word that the genetic memory translated as: Maker.
Face 5: Empty. Blank. As if whoever carved this ran out of time before they could finish.
Face 6: A single mark. Deep. Angry. Carved with such force it had chipped the stone.
The genetic memory supplied a meaning: REMEMBER.
Kai sat in the silent chamber for a long time, holding the stone, feeling the weight of it. The weight of extinction. The weight of being the last one to see these warnings.
"I'll remember," he said. "I promise. I'll remember, and I'll survive, and maybe someday I'll carve my own stones. Leave my own warnings for whoever comes after."
He carried Stone 7 back to his den, moving slowly, respectfully. This one felt different. Heavier in ways that had nothing to do with mass.
This one felt like a gravestone.
That night, he arranged all seven stones in a semicircle around his sleeping area. His own personal monument to the dead. His reminder of what happened when you weren't prepared.
He touched the Maker symbol on Stone 7.
"You made something," he said quietly. "You tried to save your people. Did you succeed? Did anyone survive?"
The stones were silent.
But in the morning, Kai made a decision.
He couldn't do this alone. The math was clear. The stones were clear. Extinction happened to individuals. Survival happened to groups.
It was time to stop being alone.
The genetic memory showed him how. The nest gland, dormant since his arrival, waiting for him to reach sufficient mass. Waiting for him to be ready.
He wasn't ready. Not really. The idea of creating life, of being responsible for someone else's survival, felt like too much.
But the alternative was dying alone in the dark while the floods came.
MASS THRESHOLD ACHIEVED
Nest gland: Functional
Breeding capability: Unlocked
Recommendation: Begin colony establishment
Minimum viable colony size: 5-7 individuals
Warning: Breeding is energy-intensive. Ensure adequate food supply.
"Okay," Kai said to his seven stones. To the vanished civilization. To the Maker who'd stood alone and failed.
"Okay. I'll build something. I'll make sure it doesn't end the way yours did."
He spent the rest of the day hunting. Not for himself. For what would come next.
For the family he was about to create.