Cat Scratch Fever

Tsia had dreamed all her life of becoming a guide, attuned to her world through a telepathic gate to another lifeform. Now, after years of preparation and the mutating of her body, she had at last taken the final guide virus that would create the biogate she so desperately craved.

But the longed-for link brought Tsia only pain. For the lifeform her virus had chosen for her was the one lifeform that was forbidden – the felines, who had scouted the planet for the First Droppers and, in exchange, been promised their freedom forever from human domination. The guide, Tsia, could hear those cats, and could sense them telepathically, but by the laws of the Guide Guild and the First-Landing Pact, she could never call to the cats, never speak with them, never approach them.

But then capture and imprisonment, torture and slavery took the place of an empty future. Suddenly, Tsia's only hope lay with her biogate – and once she had touched the minds of the cats, there would be no turning back...