Chapter Text
June 3, 2034
Dear Grady Smith,
By order of The Administration of Shifter Security you are to be relocated to the custody of the supervisory pack as listed below. Failure to comply will result in a fine of $1,000 and arrest and imprisonment for no less than one year. You have 10 days from the date of this letter to remand yourself to the custody of the supervisory pack.
James Pack
987 Sideways Drive
Kansas, 556634
JJ
Jack Johnson
Director of Beta Placement, ASS
Fuck! Grady hadn’t gotten the letter until June 9th. He had only threeish days to get across the country and to a strange pack to “supervise him.” Grady was tempted to consider going on the run, but he didn’t exactly have a whole lot of money to support his drifter lifestyle, and he wasn’t able to pick up odd jobs with the state he was in.
This whole mess was because of a stupid work accident that sent him to the hospital, which led to him being species-typed while unconscious. When Grady came to, he was met by a shifter social worker who explained that because he’d typed as a beta shifter and there was no previous record of him with the mandatory shifter registry, he’d be placed in a supervisory pack. Grady had tried to argue, but the social worker had offered to get police to remand him to a holding facility if he wasn’t going to be compliant. Grady had shut up and dealt with the hospital, and then had gotten the bus home to his shitty apartment. His phone, once he’d remembered to check it (head injuries weren’t a joke) he saw that he’d been fired effective immediately from his job and his paycheck was being withheld for the damages to the equipment.
So here Grady was, 10 days post work accident and just now able to cope with the concussion symptoms that still existed, itchy stitches and scabbed over scrapes, a broken wrist in a splint that he was supposed to get casted but never got around to calling an orthopedic doctor, with a whopping $478 in his bank account to get him to a supervisory pack for fuck knows what or how long. Grady would cry if it didn’t make his head hurt worse.
The studio apartment was shitty, but it was his. He didn’t know if the pack would be keeping him for a month or longer, but now he didn’t have enough to make bills and rent, so it looked like eviction was in his future. He grabbed the duffel bag and backpack he’d kept in the floor of his closet and started shoving his belongings in to them. He made a list in his head about the stuff he had to do before he left. Turn off the utilities to the apartment, find a bus schedule to see how long it would take him to get to Kansas and if they’d allow his bike as luggage, and if they didn’t he’d need to sell it before he left. He had to return the two library books he’d checked out, and then give them his card since he had no idea if he’d ever come back. If he went to the library he could use their computers, instead of his shitty phone, to work out the bus schedule.