0600 - Yesha, Travel district

  An alarm slowly, gently, started to play the soothing sound of waves crashing with increasing intensity. A small mechanical clacking noise preceded the steel shutters springing to life as they separated and let in thin lines of morning sun before they quietly reeled up into the ceiling to reveal a horizontal bar of windows across the entire wall. Light spilled into the well appointed hotel suite, falling across a tangled lump underneath the pure white blankets and mountain of downy pillows.

  With a lengthy groan, Katie Rodgergious threw the covers off and sat up, her eyes still closed and dark hair a wild mess. She wanted more sleep, but knew that her feet had to hit the ground immediately. There was no time to waste. The spy and his idiotic group of peasants that took her hand had to pay, and she had to be there for it.

  A calm synthesized masculine voice spoke from omnipresent speakers, following her through the spacious set of rooms as she zombie-walked her way to the shower. She pulled off her nightdress, angrily balling it up with her one hand and throwing it at one of the paintings riveted to the wall along the way.

  “Eighty four degrees, clear and sunny skies with a thirty percent chance of showers in the afternoon,” the digital assistant informed her. “Your keyword preferences have highlighted the following headlines. Riots and bombs, Nubranagain pays the price. Allshouse lead auditor slams new religious movement. Roaming mobs, should the clergy be held responsible? All travel south of TR-40 prohibited without military escort. Would you like to know more?”

  “No, prepare breakfast option three, and my usual drink,” Katie answered groggily before stepping into the shower.

  “Right away, Ms. Rodgeregious. Preparing breakfast option three, Middle-sea yogurt and a hard boiled egg. Preparing custom drink BOUNCE? health formula, mixed with lemon zest and 1 oz of Whiteswan vodka. I am required to remind you to not operate machinery or vehicles while under the influence.”

  “Shut up,” she snapped, closing the sliding crystal door behind her.

  Her assistant did not answer, and water turned itself on. A half hour later she left the bathroom, struggling to wrap a towel around herself with her remaining hand and the useless bandage capped nub on the end of her other arm. Her temporary prosthetic waited for her on the table in the main room where she had slammed it down the night before, next to the smashed vase of flowers and puddle of green-tinted water that had mostly dried into a crusty residue that covered half of the table and dripped down to the floor.

  “Call me a cab, destination Council office 12.”

  A pleasant chime sounded in acknowledgement, her assistant still set to not speak after being told to shut up. That drew a grin from Katie. She enjoyed the perfect obedience of her assistant, but her smile quickly turned into a scowl as she picked up the plastic and titanium hand replacement from the table. She clicked it on to the quick-set bandage on the end of her arm, jerkily tightening the straps around the remains of her forearm and forcing the thing into place.

  She hated that she needed it, but she had to get dressed quickly. As much as she despised the new prosthetic, it was still more useful than the empty nub that she would never get used to. She would never let herself get used to it. That empty space at the end of her arm would be her constant reminder of what that ungrateful brat and her freak of a new master had taken.

  Another chime sounded, and a small steel door slid open in the untouched kitchen. A tray rolled out and deposited itself on the counter before the door closed and merged back into the paneling. Her breakfast had arrived, but it would have to wait. She didn’t have time, she never had time.

  Still, she grabbed the drink and gulped down several mouthfuls of the thick health drink as she walked back into the bedroom, looking for the rush-ordered dresses she had delivered to her closet before falling asleep the previous night. She needed to look immaculate, to leverage her second best asset in the face of the dour Director’s disappointment. She knew the effectiveness of beauty, and it was a perfect camouflage to distract from the cunning and ruthless mind that was her true weapon against the world.

  If only it had worked on that liar, that spy, or whatever monster was pretending to be Nickolas Spenser. Had he always been a plant? Some enhanced spy from the grays, or a cyborg of some kind from one of a dozen more powerful rival countries? He had practically ignored her efforts, focusing instead on his own ambitions and dumb little group of buddies. He’d even managed to sway one of her best girls over to his side, and convince one of their better soldiers to go along with his bullshit. She couldn’t care less about losing the ranger, they routinely lost stock from those ranks in normal every-day fighting across the country, but she had spent a couple of years cultivating Alianora as a more useful and precise tool. All of that money, and the chain of favors traded and granted, had gone entirely to waste.

  It had been even worse than a waste, the whole thing had turned into a toxic weight that threatened to drag her back down the mountain she had fought her way up over the decade. Everything was threatening to unravel. All of her work and sacrifice had blown up in her face. If only he would have listened and fallen in line, he could have made a valuable double agent. She could have been promoted to director herself, or even brought into the Security Guild and worked under the Councilor himself.

  All of that was in flames now. All that was left was salvage and revenge, but she would make the best of what she had. She always did. She always came out on top. She would bend the world to her wishes and see that anyone who stood in her way did not live long to defy her.

  Just as she finished applying her makeup and was misting on a final coat of hairspray, the assistant chimed again. A text notification appeared in the corner of her implanted display projector, letting her know that the taxi she had called for had arrived. With one final look, and a quick smooth of the sleek cream colored dress she had pulled on, she turned away from the mirror. The breakfast she’d ordered went forgotten on the kitchen counter as she took up her drink and draped a short jacket over the useless fake hand.

  She never wore jackets, but something compelled her to bring it. A subconscious urge to replace the expensive imported tablet she had carried for years that the traitors had stolen from her, and a thin designer shield to hide the latest piece of herself she had sacrificed on her climb to the top.

  The taxi was primitive. A wheeled gas-powered device that rolled along the ground amongst the working poor and packs of armored shepherds that tended to the flock. The driver, a poorly shaven and overly familiar man, had tried to engage her with smalltalk but had quieted down when met with stonewalled silence. Instead, Katie absorbed herself in her display, flicking her eyes back and forth and going over the latest reports.

  Images of the spy and his brat had popped up everywhere, all seemingly at once. They had video of him boarding a train in New Aragon, six different flights had him on their passenger manifests, and no less than twenty trade-route cameras had taken images of various members of their little cadre in vehicles all across the country. Two different jails even showed them as being amongst the latest sweeps brought in by the shepherds in their ongoing crackdown against the idiotic Allshouse movement that had stirred the commons into a frenzy.

  She let out a sigh, remembering the destruction that she had seen in the reports after the last few days. Her previous domain was now a twisted wreck, her beautiful ship and brand-fucking-new residential tower a pile of shameful rubble. She had spent the last year attracting the best candidates, hiring the brightest up and coming analysts and managers. She had run a well oiled operation, and was pulling in money hand over fist to send up the chain.

  The ungrateful hoard that constantly pressed against the outer fences took and took, expecting everything to be handed to them for nothing. They spent their days laying in the street and accepting the handouts she had been forced to concede. Nearly a whole 6 percent of her budget! She could hire a whole new mobile battalion of shepherds complete with vehicles for what she spent on that unwashed mob. Now look at them, broken, bloody, and dying in the very streets that had been paved with the proceeds of the jobs that her hard work had created.

  The council had dropped two rocks on the city, targeting the mob as it swarmed over the husk of her beautiful central district. The whole area had been leveled, reduced to nothing but a crater that could be seen from low orbit.

  Katie dwelled on everything that had been ripped away from her for the whole ride, and left the taxi without another word when the vehicle pulled up in front of the towering glass edifice of Council office 12.

  The security scanner washed over her with a light tingling sensation as she stepped through the doors, and she ignored the polite wave from the non-armored guard behind the thickly glassed booth next to the door. Her heels clicked against the polished concrete floor and no one stopped her as she made her way to the elevator.

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  She continued reading through intel reports on her way up, ignoring a few other passengers that came and went during the long ride. A bomb had just gone off outside of a shepherds armory in another city, and yet more video clips and images of Nick and his brat were being linked to it.

  She scowled and huffed in frustration, the three rumple-suited workers in the elevator pointedly averted their eyes and quickly rushed out at the next stop. She didn't understand. How was that bastard doing this? There was no way he could possibly be in all of these places, and the techs all assured her that the images were not faked, and the systems had not been hacked.

  He had to be working with the grays, or another of the alien races had somehow found a loophole in the system to force an agent over. She didn't have the security clearance to view the documents about the grays that the administration had been collecting for the last few decades, but had pried some stories out of the director and a few other less important but knowledgeable wonks.

  They were from a neighboring star system, and a group of them had taken the long flight over before the Links arrived at either planet. They were a secretive bunch, and had remained hidden until imported tech had allowed the detection of their ship. As far as she knew they mostly wanted to watch and study, but had lately grown more bold and sought to use their higher base tech to win an advantage over the struggling humans.

  Whatever they were up to, their main ship had been destroyed last year by another nation. The survivors were scattered and attempting to hide, but that did not mean they weren't dangerous. Perhaps they had secured a link to regain communication with their home world.

  The door opened once more, and her onboard assistant gave a silent flashing notification on her display that this was her floor. She closed the document she had been reading and stepped out of the elevator into a small lobby. Three hallways led off from the elevator bays, and her assistant guided her to the left.

  For a half second, she resented being led around by the things direction. She was the one who was supposed to give orders. Still, she needed to be on time to keep the director happy, for now anyway. Soon enough they'd all probably be fired, or reassigned. She'd made one last play, and now was the time to see if it would bear fruit.

  Room 4505 was only a few doors down the hallway, and led into a small waiting room. There was a desk for a secretary, and a couch to wait on, but both were empty and the door to the interior office was slightly ajar. The room stank of something unfamiliar but harsh, and a light haze wafted around in wisps and hanging clouds that lazily swirled to the faint sound of old orchestral music.

  Katie pushed her way through the door, her smile drawn like a saber and her jacket draped over her accursed missing hand.

  “Director, the reports just keep…” she paused, her smile faltering.

  Director Howard was not wearing his tie, and his top two buttons were undone. His desk had been kicked away at an odd angle and he was slowly spinning in the glossy black executives chair with a lit cigar in one hand, and a half full bottle of amber liquid sat on the desk.

  When his chair spun him around to face her, he put a foot down and stopped his rotation. “Katie, good. We have a few minutes to speak before they arrive.”

  She started to step towards him, noting the lack of anywhere else for her to sit, but his use of her first name caused her to stop in her tracks. Her smile faltered again. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Nothing for you to worry about. Tell me, have you gotten anything meaningful about your runaway?”

  Katie nodded and began to answer, mentally preparing the speech she had been rehearsing since yesterday. “Director—”

  “Call me Ted,” he cut her off, before taking a long drag of the stinking cigar.

  “What?”

  “Just… forget it. Go on.”

  “Alright, Ted…” she started again, taking a deep breath to recover her mental balance. “We have reports of them popping up all over, visual evidence, digital recordings, secure flight logs, but zero eye witnesses. I think it's a smoke screen, and they would have continued to run as straight for the border as possible. They’re likely crossing into the mountains as we speak.”

  The director nodded, exhaling a rolling cloud of stinking smoke off to the side before answering. “You're the last person to actually see them.”

  He had said it as a matter of fact. But she still nodded. “I am, dir… Ted. I'm not sure how they got away from the sweeps, likely outside help, but they would have been picked up by now if they hadn't made it out of the quarantine. We need to send everything we can after them into the DMZ, if they cross the border and take what they know to Boralia, who knows what sort of deal they can make.”

  He nodded, “You'll take Haskar and his men after them, plus whatever mercenaries you can scrape up. Your new orders should be hitting your inbox soon, I pulled some strings and got you assigned as a consultant to the headhunter team. Boralia won't take them though, we already signaled them through the back channels about the danger he poses. I floated your theory about the grays, and they’re aware. They're in on the issue, they let us see the interrogation footage of one of the two they caught a few years ago.”

  She couldn't help herself, and excitement entered her voice with her next question. “They caught two of them?”

  She reeled from the knowledge. Why was this not a bigger deal? Especially now that they were likely interfering with agents like Nick.

  “We have one as well, or what's left of it. We traded intel around the time the ships came down.”

  “Fuck…” she breathed out. “That really was a crazy few months. I'm surprised they didn't try anything before this.”

  “That’s what I'm moving towards. The footage you brought back is outside of their capabilities. They're maybe only a hundred years ahead of us, tech wise, and their unity is not complete. Nothing like what you saw should be possible with anything we could import. That's why you have to bring him in. We cannot allow whatever tech he has to fall into the hands of our enemies. We think it's something off market, maybe military. We're guessing it's either Gonlieu, or more likely, Kernetch. Those birdbrained bastards have been far too interested in us, and before you picked him up he was visiting one of their shops near daily.”

  Katie's heart fell. “How the fuck could I have missed that? Were they studying us for biotech?”

  “That’s one theory,” he took another puff of his cigar, then glanced down at a smartwatch on his wrist with a frown.

  A thought she'd had a thousand times came up as she watched the older man with his outdated watch. “You should really get a display implant, there's no way to get enough information on that tiny screen.”

  He flashed her a dangerous look, and she closed her mouth. There was a reason that sentence had remained just a thought before now, but the stress of the week and the rapid-fire new information he had been spouting off had loosened her up enough for it to slip through a crack. The vodka in her breakfast probably hadn't helped either.

  “It gives me all the information I need. Now, take this, and get out of here. You have to go get that little shit and drag him back to the council.” He tossed a keychain to her, which she fumbled when she tried to catch it with her missing dominant hand.

  She picked up the keys, counting three keys and two small data sticks, as well as a tag with a list of passwords and names. “What's this?”

  “Vault keys, your budget is about to disappear and you'll need cash. Just go, you'll figure it out. Hurry, and bring back that tech if you have to cut it out of the bastard. I'll have maybe six months before the trial starts.”

  “What?” She asked, feeling lost all of a sudden. Anger crept into her voice, she hated not understanding what was happening.

  “Go! That's an order,” he barked, and the lifetime of obedience to one's betters snapped her to attention. The director checked his watch again and stood up, giving her an angry look and picking up the bottle like he might throw it at her.

  She gave a frustrated half bow. “Right away Director, but you could at least—”

  He slammed the bottom of the bottle against the table. Causing it to splash across himself and the desk. Rather than push her luck, Katie bit down her question and simply turned and walked out of the room.

  She fumed all the way back to the elevator, until the doors opened and two black-armored soldiers pushed their way out, weapons up and leveled at her. One of them carried a large black box clipped to their backplate, like a massive framed pack with hard plastic sides.

  A bland looking man a little older than her stepped out between them to look her over. His suit was cheap, but his haircut was immaculate and the surgery done to his face was only noticeable because she knew what to look for.

  “Miss Rodgeregious… is your boss in office today?” His voice was equally as bland as his appearance but his eyes were dead, entirely devoid of emotion.

  Katie went rigid, and answered immediately as cold fear flowed down her spine. “Yes, he's in…” her sentence hung at the end, as she knew what the man was but not what to call him. They held no specific office or title, but everyone knew of them. Most called them ghosts, nameless men with black armored soldiers who showed up and made people disappear.

  They were rarely talked about, and you were supposed to ignore them if you saw them unless you were unlucky enough to be questioned by one. She had vowed to never be in the position to have to answer their questions, but here she was.

  He regarded her with those cold eyes, shark’s eyes. Staring through her for a long moment. “Good, Miss Katie. Better run along now.”

  Having spoken his piece, he stepped around her. His two soldiers moved like extensions of himself in perfect unison, one marching in front and one, with the big box strapped to their back, behind as they headed in the direction she had just come from.

  Katie watched for a moment, caught staring after the trio. Is that what had Howard so worked up? Had he known? The elevator doors started to close, causing her to have to lunge forward and jam her new prosthetic in the gap before they could fully seal.

  The elevator made a plaintive ping, before opening again. This time she rushed through, pushing the button for the ground floor a half dozen times in her rush to get away from the ghost and his enforcers.

  On the way down to the lobby, she examined the tag with the keys. Some of the names on the tag were familiar, mid level administrators here in the capital, but none of them were part of her chain of command.

  She made a few calls to ease her mind, browbeating assistants and threatening secretaries until she had three new appointments. Whatever was in these vaults better be good, but the way the director had spoken of them gave her hope. Maybe this was the new window of opportunity she needed, and it certainly aligned with her personal goals of tracking the spy down.

  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it took a little longer than it needed to as well. She'd be out of the country, and when one door closed another often opened.