FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Alex stretched one arm up to grab the latch above him, the other still preoccupied with preventing him from falling back down the ladder shaft below. The steel handle was cold even beneath his gloved paw, and with a grunt of effort he tugged at the mechanism, slowly wrenching it around until it fell into place with a metallic clank. Panting quietly from the exertion, the wolf pushed the creaky hatch up and open, ascending the final few rungs and pulling himself up onto the rooftop.

The wind hit him immediately, a howling gale that could easily topple someone more unprepared, and send them stumbling over the short wall behind to fall more than a hundred floors down- meeting a quick and messy end on the streets below. But Alex had ventured up here more than a few times, and knew by now how to handle himself on the rooftop of a skyscraper, even on a particularly blustery evening like this one.

He crouched low against the flat surface of the roof, steadying his footing until he acclimatised to the constant push of the wind, before standing slowly and leaning into the gale, feeling the rush of air buffeting his orange jacket and sweeping back the white fur covering his head. Alex was grateful for his choice of insulating clothing, or he'd certainly be suffering the chill by now. Even then, his ears already felt like they were going numb.

The wolf inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. Up here, most of the smog and pollution that stifled the streets of Horizon cleared away, leaving real fresh air in its place. Alex revelled in it, finally able to breathe easily without tasting the permanent stink of unclean city air. Most people learned to cope eventually, but it seemed he'd lost the genetic lottery in that regard. Any time he went outside unprotected, the acrid haze of pollutants stung his lungs and his allergies quickly reduced him to a coughing, choking mess. Ever since he was a kid, Alex had been forced to make use of a filtration mask whenever he had to leave the relative comfort of air-filtered indoor spaces. It was just another thing to love about this place.

He opened his eyes again.

The sprawling cityscape of Horizon occupied every corner of his vision, an ocean of glass and steel spreading out to cover the entire landscape for miles around, running up against the lakeshore and even creeping up the distant hills to the northwest. Past all of that, a great perimeter wall marked the furthest extent of the great metropolis, running from the industrial flatland in the northeast right round to the southern residential district, then back around hugging the great lake that formed a large section of Horizon's border.

The cloud-obscured sun hung low in the sky, and as night gradually approached the city was coming alive with light. Soft yellows and harsh whites spilled from a million illuminated windows, while countless advertisements and corporate logos coated skyscrapers in every imaginable hue of colour. Where the roads were visible, endless streams of red and white flowed along them, the city's lifeblood coursing perpetually through a vast and unbroken network of veins.

To Alex's right, a lot of Horizon's centre was concealed behind a duo of nearby buildings that rose a few dozen stories above his chosen viewpoint, but a handful of megatowers were still visible along the edge of the central district, just outside of the most coveted real estate. They shot up from between the mid-rises like immense reaching fingers, each soaring at least a mile into the sky, ascending up to the low clouds and beyond them again to vanish in the murky gloom above.

Few people got to see the city like this. For all the poverty and strife, conflict and crime he knew lay beneath that glimmering veneer, Alex couldn't deny that Horizon still held its own strange beauty.

But the view alone wasn't why he was up here. Fighting the wind, the wolf stepped carefully across the rooftop, heading for the protection afforded by one of the large structural pillars holding up the ornamental arch above. As soon as he moved into the wind's shadow and felt the buffeting gale die down, Alex breathed a sigh of relief and slipped off the backpack he'd hauled up with him, sitting down in the relative shelter behind the metal buttress. It hadn't rained today, at least, so the roof was mercifully dry under his rear.

He unzipped the main compartment of the bag, retrieving a hefty set of binoculars along with a sturdy telescopic stand. Alex went to work setting up his equipment, attaching the stand before adjusting it so the eyepieces were level with his line of vision. Shuffling around until he was seated in a cross-legged position, he was just tall enough to see over the low wall encircling the rooftop, with the binoculars angled just past the obscuring bulk of the structural pillar to his right.

Finding the power switch with a gloved paw, he flicked it on and brought his eyes up to the lenses. A rotating logo sat in the centre of his vision, as the software finished loading.

Synoptix - T7. This model had some nice features that the hobbyist in him appreciated. Automatic object tracking, multispectral image capture, that sort of thing. Sure, they weren't the highest quality brand out there, but they were the best Alex could afford on the unreliable salary of a maintenance engineer.

His job was actually how he'd managed to get access to this rooftop in the first place. Most corporate buildings in the city centre were access-controlled, and contractors like him were given temporary biometric security passes that were supposed to expire once a job was complete. Through some administrative error, however, Alex's clearance was never revoked this time.

He'd worked here for about a week, repairing a poorly-installed fire control panel that had erroneously dumped enough carbon dioxide into the offices to hospitalise hundreds of people. Officially, nobody died, but the corporation that owned this tower was big enough that they could easily have afforded an extensive cover-up if they needed one. At least they paid their engineers well...

A few days after repairing the faulty system- honestly, it was a wonder it hadn't failed sooner- Alex realised he'd left one of his multitools behind in a service duct. Upon returning to retrieve it, he discovered could still get into all the maintenance areas here- including the rooftop. It seemed the owners had cheaped out on security as much as they had on safety.

Their oversight, as it turned out, suited his hobby rather perfectly.

The swirling logo finally faded away, replaced by a crystal-clear view of the city, zoomed in about ten times. Another button press brought up the UI overlay- everything from magnification level to local weather conditions all crammed around the edge of the display, with a crosshair in the centre for sighting purposes.

The wolf settled in to wait. It didn't take long for the first one to come into view, speeding into frame from his left as it ascended up from behind an office block. Alex quickly zoomed in, centring the crosshairs on it, and the auto-tracking did the rest. Now locked on target, all he had to do was watch through the eyepieces as the binoculars panned themselves to keep it in view.

He zoomed in further as the object, an unpiloted drone, streaked across the face of a residential tower, never climbing any higher than the nearby skyline. Instead, it nimbly weaved its way between buildings, always seeming to find the most efficient path to traverse the uneven cityscape as it flew.

"Merali..." Alex mumbled. "Gotta' be."

Sure enough, another zoom allowed him to catch a brief glimpse of that familiar stylised "M" embossed onto the side of the drone's sleek white frame, before it dipped back down and passed out of sight once more.

He grinned. This was a good start to the night. Meralis were a rare enough sight, and their pathing software was some of the most sophisticated out there, which always made them a lot of fun to watch. He waited a minute or so, hoping to see the little flying machine resurfacing from the cityscape once more, but it never reappeared.

Oh well. His binoculars recorded everything anyway, so he could always go back and rewatch it later. There was always more to see, and so he began the hunt anew.

Alex wasn't sure exactly why exactly he enjoyed dronewatching so much. He'd been fascinated with them ever since he was a kid, an interest that quickly turned into an obsession when he was gifted a toy drone on his thirteenth birthday. It hadn't taken long for him to come across a small but fiercely dedicated group of hobbyists on the city's network, other people who shared his niche interest and were all too happy to induct another into their ranks. Now, almost two decades later, Alex was still hooked.

It was something about how they flew that captivated him. Drones from different manufacturers all had their own little quirks -personalities, even, embedded into the very base code of their autopiloting software, and no two models ever behaved quite the same way.

Visegrad transporters, one of Alex's favourite sights, were slow, lumbering behemoths almost the size of a two-storey house. You'd often hear the roar of their massive engines before you even saw them coming- a sound that was becoming ever more common these days, as heavy shipping increasingly moved away from Horizon's overcrowded road network and into the skies above. Meralis, by contrast, were lean, impossibly nimble quadcopters that barely made a noise as they sailed above the city, darting around more like living things than machines.

One of the biggest corporations, Traxus, operated a whole fleet of different drone models. All were stealthy, quiet and extremely difficult to spot and track -and some, if the leaks were to be believed, were armed to the teeth with concealed and _very_illegal weapons systems. Given Traxus' rather shady reputation, Alex wouldn't have been surprised if those leaks were true.

And then there were Rodels. The wolf sighed when he saw his fourth one of the night gliding into view, its ugly square shape unmistakable as anything else. Rodels were about as uninteresting as a drone could be; average speed, boring design, simple on-rails programming- and they usually never carried anything more exciting than somebody's shopping.

Tonight had started out so well, too. That Merali -a Mark 16, he reckoned- had spoiled him, and there had been nothing but basic transporter models ever since. He's spotted a few piloted craft too, but he didn't care so much for those. Alex had now been up here for a couple of hours, and though the wind had died down somewhat he was definitely starting to feel the chill. The last rays of sunshine were quickly vanishing behind the mountains off to the east, as night steadily encroached on Horizon.

Seemed like it was about time to call it quits.

Alex brought the binoculars around, doing a final quick sweep of the skyline. When that yielded nothing more of interest, he decided to pack up for the night.

Before he could move away from the viewfinder, however, something unusual caught his eye. Rising up from the edge of the middle districts and heading south towards the suburbs, it was far enough in the distance that Alex had to set the magnification to its maximum to see it clearly.

"...what the fuck is that?"

He blinked, unable to trust that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. It was still there, however, moving shockingly slow for what seemed to be some type of winged aircraft. No, that wasn't right -the proportions were all off, and even from so far away the design looked ridiculous, like nothing he'd ever seen before.

Zoomed in as far as possible, the image was still blurry enough that Alex couldn't make sense of its exact shape. It was all weird shapes and odd angles, and lacked any visible engines. The twilight gloom made any details all the more difficult to discern, the object just barely illuminated by the ambient light of the city.

Working a control dial, Alex cycled through the different spectra, hoping they might reveal something visible light couldn't. To his surprise, it was practically invisible on radar, but any notion of it being a stealth craft was wiped out when he switched to infrared. There, it shone, bright even against the glow of hot air rising from the streets beneath.

Now the wolf could make out more detail, but what he saw only mystified him further. Those were definitely wings, alright- but their shape looked organic, not constructed, and they periodically beat as if belonging to some overgrown bird. He thought he could see the blurry shape of four legs tucked below the main body, even a damn head jutting out at the front of it if he squinted enough.

Alex slowly sat back from the binoculars in shock. Whatever the hell it was, this thing was alive.

By the time he recovered his wits enough to look again, it was gone, vanished into the distance. He hugged his jacket tight against the cold, and sat back against the support strut, staring down at his boots.

He'd heard the stories. Everyone had. Stories of things living out in the wilds, great winged monsters with claws the size of your head and jaws big enough to swallow a person whole, things that sometimes snuck into the city at night if they were feeling particularly hungry...

Alex had never believed them. Those were kids' stories, told by parents to get youngsters to behave. If they were real, surely there would be proof: videos, images, news reports, anything! Rumours without evidence remained just that- rumours.

But, there was a word thrown around. Spoken in obscure forums and shady bars, he'd even overheard a colleague mention it once in hushed conversation.

Ferals. Sometimes blamed for unexplained sightings and the occasional, particularly gruesome murder. Once again, he'd dismissed the evidence as lacking. Nobody ever seemed to be able to produce a photo of one of these things, and Alex found the repeated allegations of coverups by city authorities to be laughable, the stuff of sensationalist journalism rather than objective reality.

And yet, there it was. With his own eyes, he'd seen it. Wings. Tail. Four legs. Flying. Its existence defying everything he thought he knew about the world. His chest felt tight.

Sure, maybe it was just a trillionaire's runaway exotic pet. Or the results of some clandestine bioengineering project escaping confinement... who knew what the big corps were up to these days?

But he couldn't shake the feeling that this was something more.

Maybe, he thought, somebody on the spotter forums would be able to say for sure. He still had the recording saved- though uploading that could be risky, if he really had stumbled upon something that might warrant him being 'covered up'. Alex shivered, and not from the cold.

His curiosity was insatiable, however, soon beating out any feelings of trepidation or anxiety. The wolf knew he wouldn't be able to let this go, no matter how much he tried to forget what he'd seen. Moving to pack away his equipment, Alex decided to sleep on it. Maybe he'd come to his senses by tomorrow.

Night had fallen over the city. He stood, taking in the familiar view of Horizon's skyline once more.

It seemed a little less familiar now.