Post by Chirugal on Aug 26, 2009 15:35:35 GMT
Marianne asked me if there was anything I wanted to contribute to this section - I'm not posting this up for shameless self-promotion reasons, honest! ;D
***
The Innocent
“This has better be good.” I failed to suppress a yawn as I shut the door behind me.
Keiko Yamashita swivelled in her desk-chair, a grim smile on her face. “It’s better than good. This is unbelievable,” she said, beckoning me closer.
Seven a.m. had never been my favourite time of day, but my curiosity was piqued nevertheless. I dropped into the seat she offered me, focusing my attention on the holoscreen on the desk. Keiko pushed a shot-glass of caffeine concentrate toward me. I eyed it dubiously. I didn’t like to take this stuff too often – okay, it was a massive rush, and it never failed to wake me up, but sometimes it took days to come down. I usually only took it before a job, and that had to be well-timed, so that the jitters had passed when I needed steady hands.
“Oh, just take it,” Keiko ordered. “You need to be awake for this.”
Relenting, I downed the contents of the glass and grimaced at the bitter aftertaste. For a couple of seconds, nothing seemed to happen, but then a huge jolt of adrenaline hit my system and stayed there. My fatigue magically dropped away as I shifted in my chair and nodded to her. “Okay.”
With a few spoken commands to her computer sys, Keiko brought up the insta-mail account she used for our business correspondence. She often assured me it was harder than a Swiss bank account to get into, but I lived in fear that a government hacker would somehow stumble across it and discover the nature of our work.
“Access oh-two, twelve-ten-forty-eight,” Keiko directed, and the interface responded by throwing up a new window. “There.” She sat back and let me read the brief message.
I am told you are the best in the business. I require discretion and efficiency – you are under no obligation to accept, but if you breathe a word of this to anyone I will expose your organisation to the authorities. They would not take your word over mine.
Meet me at Quadra tonight at 9pm to discuss the termination of Jake Tennant.
My eyes widened. “You’re kidding!”
Keiko grinned smugly. “Told you it was big. This could be the one that turns everything around.”
My mind raced as I considered the implications. Jake Tennant had been ruling the country – with only the semblance of a democratic council – since I was sixteen. The upper classes supported him; why wouldn’t they? Crime was down eighty per cent, there were plenty of jobs to go around, and he’d solved that pesky illegal immigration problem.
The bourgeoisie conveniently forgot the cost of all this. Tennant’s regime was responsible for the persecution and deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including my entire family.
I definitely had a bone to pick with Jake Tennant.
“Who’s the client?” I demanded, scanning the text for clues.
Keiko shrugged, picking through her make-up bag for eyeliner. “No idea. Whoever it was used some pretty heavy tech – I can’t even get an IP address. If I had to guess, I’d say Ray Benson or one of his group.”
I nodded slowly. It made sense. Benson had been the leader of the opposition when Tennant was elected. Once things turned ugly, he made a show of stepping down from politics, but we had enough contacts to know he was just waiting for his moment.
“Where’s Nick?” I asked Keiko, shoving back my chair. “He needs to be in on this right now.”
She snorted, her delicate Asian features twisting in disdain. “No, he doesn’t. You just think he does.”
Nick Foster was my on again/off again boyfriend (at the moment, he was definitely off), and more proficient with firearms than anyone else I had ever met. He and Keiko hated each other – she considered him an egotistical control-freak who wasn’t worthy of my time; he thought she was being passive-aggressive because she preferred information-gathering to violence. At times, I wanted to bash their heads together. “Let’s not have this discussion again.”
She dropped the subject for the moment. “So, are we taking it? I can see how far I can get into Downing Street’s files…” I opened my mouth, alarmed, and she cut me off. “No, mother, I won’t take any unnecessary risks. They won’t even know I’m there.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
Keiko didn’t even turn around. “Kick Nick in the nuts for me when you see him.”
I had to smile. “Bye, Kei…”
***
Quadra was located at the top end of Leeds centre, nestled amid the rest of the bars and clubs that made up what had, in 2045, been christened ‘The Leisure District’. The tiny club was in a class all its own; it took the term ‘retro’ to new levels by refusing to play anything recorded after 2010. Because of this, its clientele tended to be eccentric and steeped in nostalgia.
Nick fit right in – not by choice, but by coincidence. His love of loud Hawaiian shirts and baggy jeans stood him in good stead now, as he ambled up the hill toward me with a slight frown on his face. “You know, you’re going to stand out like a sore thumb in there.”
I glanced down at my black jeans and khaki vest top critically, then back up at him. “This is a timeless outfit. You’ve seen the films – they were wearing this stuff fifty years ago.”
He was forced to concede the point, but he didn’t like it. “You ready?”
We nodded to the bouncers and slipped inside the club, hesitating just inside as our eyes adjusted to the dim interior. Nick nudged my arm, and I surreptitiously palmed the tiny vial of sight-enhancer he offered me. I was going to need it tonight.
I glanced around, trying to pinpoint our client amongst the throngs of people. It was a futile gesture; I didn’t even know who I was looking for, and even if I did, the place was surprisingly full. “Drink?” I yelled at Nick, who nodded.
We drifted over to the bar, and I ordered a shot of vodka. Once the barman’s attention was elsewhere, I flipped off the lid of the plastic vial with a fingernail and poured the sight enhancer into the glass. Downing the mixture in one go, I steeled myself against the burn of the combined drug and alcohol.
Within seconds, my eyesight had improved dramatically, and my eyes watered with the sudden adjustment. I knew I’d have a headache in a few hours, but for now everything was in sharp focus, allowing me to pick out the tiniest detail. If the client was merely testing our loyalties to the government, ready to have us killed for our cooperation, I would know it from his or her movements.
Nick, with a mischievous grin, knocked back his own shot and headed after a brunette clothed entirely in red lace. She shot him a dazzling smile and slid her arms around his neck, whilst I tried to resist the urge to kill them both.
I scanned the club again for our client – at least one of us should be on the alert. About to give up and order another drink to drown my sorrows, I noticed a petite girl pushing through the gyrating masses toward me. My enhanced eyes picked out the telltale sheen of newly-applied dye in her hair, and a couple of auburn threads she’d missed. She pushed up onto the bar-stool next to me, nodding a greeting. “Here alone?”
I began to shake my head, wondering how best to get rid of her so I could concentrate on the job at hand, but something nagged at the back of my mind. Hang on… That can’t be…
I stared, unable to disguise my shock. In my head, I’d had a tidy little list of potential clients, but this girl’s name hadn’t even crossed my mind. Maria Tennant, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the Prime Minister, was smaller than I’d expected. She wore green contact lenses that gave her irises a distorted, swirled effect, which drew attention from the features she couldn’t change – a button nose and the full lips she’d inherited from her late mother. She definitely didn’t look like the type of person to order a hit on her own family.
Forcing my facial features back to bland and amiable, I glanced over at Nick. He was still indisposed, and I was in no mood to interrupt. I knew he’d wander back when he saw someone talking to me; he was insufferably possessive. “My partner will be along soon,” I called back over the music. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Can you do it?” she asked directly, ignoring the offer. Behind her, a trio of inebriated students collapsed against the bar, close enough to hear our yelled conversation, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. This was definitely not the right place for a business meeting – God only knew what had possessed her to suggest it.
I looked back over at Nick, who had his hand up under his conquest’s top and his tongue down her throat. Charming. It was at times like these that I could see Keiko was right. Focus, you idiot. Maria was staring at me, waiting for an answer to her question.
“Fuck Nick,” I muttered, and grabbed Maria’s arm. “Come on.”
I pushed through the door to Quadra’s squalid ladies’ toilets, and kicked open every stall until I was sure the place was empty. In here I could hear myself think, at least. “We can do it, but we’re going to need the intel from you,” I told her. “Our hacker can get into some of the government’s files, but we’re going to need the rest. Where he’ll be and when, and how heavily guarded. Defensive tech included.”
Maria nodded, her gaze unwavering. “I’ll give you everything I can. He’ll be up here in three days, negotiating the opening of a second med-research facility in Leeds. He’ll be staying at the Hilton.”
The back of my neck prickled as I considered the implications of local med-testing. Leeds was far enough away from London to be relatively safe from the reaches of the facility, and only serious offenders were taken there. If there was to be a facility nearby, though… I didn’t even want to think about it.
Maria leaned back against the sink, swiping a dyed black lock out of her face. Her shoulders slumped, and she stared down at her feet, one of which was absently tapping against the tiles. “You must really hate him. My father.”
I remembered returning to my empty house, that day six years ago; the door was ajar, the living room in disarray, my mother’s favourite vase shattered on the carpet. And there was a government notice dropped carelessly on the table, stating that the occupants of the house had been taken to ‘improve Britain’s understanding of the world’s most threatening disease, RODP’.
“Yes,” I said softly, shoving away the pain the recollection brought. “I’m sorry, but I do.”
As Maria opened her mouth to reply, several middle-aged women entered the room, teetering on archaic stilettos. As they screeched with drunken laughter and snorted cocaine from the disguised containers within their bracelets, I made a show of washing my face and re-applying my makeup. When they finally left, I cut Maria off before she could speak. “You were the last person I expected.”
She smiled grimly, and some of her bravado returned. “I’ll be the last person he expects, too. That’s why this will work.”
I hoped she was right. “Can I ask why?”
She only looked at me. Her stubborn jaw was set with anger, but her eyes were brimming with unspeakable hurt. I didn’t know what went on behind Downing Street’s guarded doors, but I was willing to bet there was more to Jake Tennant than the public knew.
Unshed tears sprang to her eyes, and she quickly averted her gaze, shrugging her shoulders as if that would answer my question. I never had been good at dealing with displays of emotion. Awkwardly, I patted her shoulder.
The bathroom door crashed open and hit the wall with enough force to crack the paintwork, before slamming shut again. Maria flinched, turning frightened eyes to me. “What the…?”
“Taz!” Nick roared as he kicked the door again. “You’d better be in there!” Before I could even open my mouth to reply, he barged in, ignoring that the room was off-limits to men. “What the fuck are you doing?”
The tension headache I’d been nursing since this afternoon abated slightly as I gave him my sweetest smile. This is going to be good. “Nick, this is Maria, our client. Maria, Nick – my business partner.”
Nick narrowed his eyes in my direction; I stared him out without flinching. There had been a time I had found that look intimidating, but by now I was pretty much over it.
“Nice to meet you,” Maria chipped in, breaking our battle of wills. She was clearly bemused, and I couldn’t blame her. We weren’t exactly giving off waves of professionalism at that moment.
Nick nodded at Maria, then froze in recognition. “What the…?” He looked from Maria to me and back, as if checking for the punchline. I basked in his momentary confusion, knowing it wouldn’t last long. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me. This is priceless! " A wide smile spread over his face, his anger seeming to melt away. He took Maria’s hand and kissed it, then grabbed my hand too and propelled us out of the bathroom and over to the bar, bent on celebrating our new alliance.
As he ordered drinks, Maria caught my eye, mouthing three confused words. “Multiple personality disorder?”
***
The Innocent
“This has better be good.” I failed to suppress a yawn as I shut the door behind me.
Keiko Yamashita swivelled in her desk-chair, a grim smile on her face. “It’s better than good. This is unbelievable,” she said, beckoning me closer.
Seven a.m. had never been my favourite time of day, but my curiosity was piqued nevertheless. I dropped into the seat she offered me, focusing my attention on the holoscreen on the desk. Keiko pushed a shot-glass of caffeine concentrate toward me. I eyed it dubiously. I didn’t like to take this stuff too often – okay, it was a massive rush, and it never failed to wake me up, but sometimes it took days to come down. I usually only took it before a job, and that had to be well-timed, so that the jitters had passed when I needed steady hands.
“Oh, just take it,” Keiko ordered. “You need to be awake for this.”
Relenting, I downed the contents of the glass and grimaced at the bitter aftertaste. For a couple of seconds, nothing seemed to happen, but then a huge jolt of adrenaline hit my system and stayed there. My fatigue magically dropped away as I shifted in my chair and nodded to her. “Okay.”
With a few spoken commands to her computer sys, Keiko brought up the insta-mail account she used for our business correspondence. She often assured me it was harder than a Swiss bank account to get into, but I lived in fear that a government hacker would somehow stumble across it and discover the nature of our work.
“Access oh-two, twelve-ten-forty-eight,” Keiko directed, and the interface responded by throwing up a new window. “There.” She sat back and let me read the brief message.
I am told you are the best in the business. I require discretion and efficiency – you are under no obligation to accept, but if you breathe a word of this to anyone I will expose your organisation to the authorities. They would not take your word over mine.
Meet me at Quadra tonight at 9pm to discuss the termination of Jake Tennant.
My eyes widened. “You’re kidding!”
Keiko grinned smugly. “Told you it was big. This could be the one that turns everything around.”
My mind raced as I considered the implications. Jake Tennant had been ruling the country – with only the semblance of a democratic council – since I was sixteen. The upper classes supported him; why wouldn’t they? Crime was down eighty per cent, there were plenty of jobs to go around, and he’d solved that pesky illegal immigration problem.
The bourgeoisie conveniently forgot the cost of all this. Tennant’s regime was responsible for the persecution and deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including my entire family.
I definitely had a bone to pick with Jake Tennant.
“Who’s the client?” I demanded, scanning the text for clues.
Keiko shrugged, picking through her make-up bag for eyeliner. “No idea. Whoever it was used some pretty heavy tech – I can’t even get an IP address. If I had to guess, I’d say Ray Benson or one of his group.”
I nodded slowly. It made sense. Benson had been the leader of the opposition when Tennant was elected. Once things turned ugly, he made a show of stepping down from politics, but we had enough contacts to know he was just waiting for his moment.
“Where’s Nick?” I asked Keiko, shoving back my chair. “He needs to be in on this right now.”
She snorted, her delicate Asian features twisting in disdain. “No, he doesn’t. You just think he does.”
Nick Foster was my on again/off again boyfriend (at the moment, he was definitely off), and more proficient with firearms than anyone else I had ever met. He and Keiko hated each other – she considered him an egotistical control-freak who wasn’t worthy of my time; he thought she was being passive-aggressive because she preferred information-gathering to violence. At times, I wanted to bash their heads together. “Let’s not have this discussion again.”
She dropped the subject for the moment. “So, are we taking it? I can see how far I can get into Downing Street’s files…” I opened my mouth, alarmed, and she cut me off. “No, mother, I won’t take any unnecessary risks. They won’t even know I’m there.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
Keiko didn’t even turn around. “Kick Nick in the nuts for me when you see him.”
I had to smile. “Bye, Kei…”
***
Quadra was located at the top end of Leeds centre, nestled amid the rest of the bars and clubs that made up what had, in 2045, been christened ‘The Leisure District’. The tiny club was in a class all its own; it took the term ‘retro’ to new levels by refusing to play anything recorded after 2010. Because of this, its clientele tended to be eccentric and steeped in nostalgia.
Nick fit right in – not by choice, but by coincidence. His love of loud Hawaiian shirts and baggy jeans stood him in good stead now, as he ambled up the hill toward me with a slight frown on his face. “You know, you’re going to stand out like a sore thumb in there.”
I glanced down at my black jeans and khaki vest top critically, then back up at him. “This is a timeless outfit. You’ve seen the films – they were wearing this stuff fifty years ago.”
He was forced to concede the point, but he didn’t like it. “You ready?”
We nodded to the bouncers and slipped inside the club, hesitating just inside as our eyes adjusted to the dim interior. Nick nudged my arm, and I surreptitiously palmed the tiny vial of sight-enhancer he offered me. I was going to need it tonight.
I glanced around, trying to pinpoint our client amongst the throngs of people. It was a futile gesture; I didn’t even know who I was looking for, and even if I did, the place was surprisingly full. “Drink?” I yelled at Nick, who nodded.
We drifted over to the bar, and I ordered a shot of vodka. Once the barman’s attention was elsewhere, I flipped off the lid of the plastic vial with a fingernail and poured the sight enhancer into the glass. Downing the mixture in one go, I steeled myself against the burn of the combined drug and alcohol.
Within seconds, my eyesight had improved dramatically, and my eyes watered with the sudden adjustment. I knew I’d have a headache in a few hours, but for now everything was in sharp focus, allowing me to pick out the tiniest detail. If the client was merely testing our loyalties to the government, ready to have us killed for our cooperation, I would know it from his or her movements.
Nick, with a mischievous grin, knocked back his own shot and headed after a brunette clothed entirely in red lace. She shot him a dazzling smile and slid her arms around his neck, whilst I tried to resist the urge to kill them both.
I scanned the club again for our client – at least one of us should be on the alert. About to give up and order another drink to drown my sorrows, I noticed a petite girl pushing through the gyrating masses toward me. My enhanced eyes picked out the telltale sheen of newly-applied dye in her hair, and a couple of auburn threads she’d missed. She pushed up onto the bar-stool next to me, nodding a greeting. “Here alone?”
I began to shake my head, wondering how best to get rid of her so I could concentrate on the job at hand, but something nagged at the back of my mind. Hang on… That can’t be…
I stared, unable to disguise my shock. In my head, I’d had a tidy little list of potential clients, but this girl’s name hadn’t even crossed my mind. Maria Tennant, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the Prime Minister, was smaller than I’d expected. She wore green contact lenses that gave her irises a distorted, swirled effect, which drew attention from the features she couldn’t change – a button nose and the full lips she’d inherited from her late mother. She definitely didn’t look like the type of person to order a hit on her own family.
Forcing my facial features back to bland and amiable, I glanced over at Nick. He was still indisposed, and I was in no mood to interrupt. I knew he’d wander back when he saw someone talking to me; he was insufferably possessive. “My partner will be along soon,” I called back over the music. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Can you do it?” she asked directly, ignoring the offer. Behind her, a trio of inebriated students collapsed against the bar, close enough to hear our yelled conversation, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. This was definitely not the right place for a business meeting – God only knew what had possessed her to suggest it.
I looked back over at Nick, who had his hand up under his conquest’s top and his tongue down her throat. Charming. It was at times like these that I could see Keiko was right. Focus, you idiot. Maria was staring at me, waiting for an answer to her question.
“Fuck Nick,” I muttered, and grabbed Maria’s arm. “Come on.”
I pushed through the door to Quadra’s squalid ladies’ toilets, and kicked open every stall until I was sure the place was empty. In here I could hear myself think, at least. “We can do it, but we’re going to need the intel from you,” I told her. “Our hacker can get into some of the government’s files, but we’re going to need the rest. Where he’ll be and when, and how heavily guarded. Defensive tech included.”
Maria nodded, her gaze unwavering. “I’ll give you everything I can. He’ll be up here in three days, negotiating the opening of a second med-research facility in Leeds. He’ll be staying at the Hilton.”
The back of my neck prickled as I considered the implications of local med-testing. Leeds was far enough away from London to be relatively safe from the reaches of the facility, and only serious offenders were taken there. If there was to be a facility nearby, though… I didn’t even want to think about it.
Maria leaned back against the sink, swiping a dyed black lock out of her face. Her shoulders slumped, and she stared down at her feet, one of which was absently tapping against the tiles. “You must really hate him. My father.”
I remembered returning to my empty house, that day six years ago; the door was ajar, the living room in disarray, my mother’s favourite vase shattered on the carpet. And there was a government notice dropped carelessly on the table, stating that the occupants of the house had been taken to ‘improve Britain’s understanding of the world’s most threatening disease, RODP’.
“Yes,” I said softly, shoving away the pain the recollection brought. “I’m sorry, but I do.”
As Maria opened her mouth to reply, several middle-aged women entered the room, teetering on archaic stilettos. As they screeched with drunken laughter and snorted cocaine from the disguised containers within their bracelets, I made a show of washing my face and re-applying my makeup. When they finally left, I cut Maria off before she could speak. “You were the last person I expected.”
She smiled grimly, and some of her bravado returned. “I’ll be the last person he expects, too. That’s why this will work.”
I hoped she was right. “Can I ask why?”
She only looked at me. Her stubborn jaw was set with anger, but her eyes were brimming with unspeakable hurt. I didn’t know what went on behind Downing Street’s guarded doors, but I was willing to bet there was more to Jake Tennant than the public knew.
Unshed tears sprang to her eyes, and she quickly averted her gaze, shrugging her shoulders as if that would answer my question. I never had been good at dealing with displays of emotion. Awkwardly, I patted her shoulder.
The bathroom door crashed open and hit the wall with enough force to crack the paintwork, before slamming shut again. Maria flinched, turning frightened eyes to me. “What the…?”
“Taz!” Nick roared as he kicked the door again. “You’d better be in there!” Before I could even open my mouth to reply, he barged in, ignoring that the room was off-limits to men. “What the fuck are you doing?”
The tension headache I’d been nursing since this afternoon abated slightly as I gave him my sweetest smile. This is going to be good. “Nick, this is Maria, our client. Maria, Nick – my business partner.”
Nick narrowed his eyes in my direction; I stared him out without flinching. There had been a time I had found that look intimidating, but by now I was pretty much over it.
“Nice to meet you,” Maria chipped in, breaking our battle of wills. She was clearly bemused, and I couldn’t blame her. We weren’t exactly giving off waves of professionalism at that moment.
Nick nodded at Maria, then froze in recognition. “What the…?” He looked from Maria to me and back, as if checking for the punchline. I basked in his momentary confusion, knowing it wouldn’t last long. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me. This is priceless! " A wide smile spread over his face, his anger seeming to melt away. He took Maria’s hand and kissed it, then grabbed my hand too and propelled us out of the bathroom and over to the bar, bent on celebrating our new alliance.
As he ordered drinks, Maria caught my eye, mouthing three confused words. “Multiple personality disorder?”