Well, I was getting bored in the office waiting for a meeting to finish so mine could start and I knocked this up seeing as we were having a fiction-fest.
Morgan Fisheart was strapped to the side of a building; Chemel (tm) straps tensioned from his back to the fast-wind PortaPitons. His Fen 30-30 ultrascope went into self-clean state as he took a dose of movement suppressors and turned on the stim-xercise machine. His muscles flexed imperceptibly and his circulation returned to parts cold through inactivity. He was nearing maximum immersion time and he could feel it. He looked at the doorway through the ubiquitous lens system on his ceramic fibre rifle, the long, slender, charcoal-black barrel the only part of him and his paraphernalia outside the rain covered cami-sneak coverall. He made like a gargoyle for several hours more, drifting in and out of self-induced perception-sleep.
Finally, it happened. His earpiece crackled into life. Words were uttered and came as such a shock, he almost twitched. His mind and body all started waking up in pieces. His sight came back to full clarity after his hearing. Language came back shortly after and, finally, his sphincter and bladder returned to normal and popped the seal closed on the Deficatalyst™. Fine liquid sprays dispersed in his mouth and the eye misters closed off, allowing him to blink for the first time in nine days. His eyes allowed him to change his focus and he could see the rain once more. This took two seconds and he was a fully function human again. He looked down the scope as the pharmaflush went through his cardiovascular and lymphatic systems and saw the door open. The door… he’d been looking at the door for nine days.
The door opened.
She stepped out, shaking her mop of pink hair, sand falling on to the streets of Mort, washed by the drainage system to the sewers below. She looked around, her long, brown coat flowing in the breeze, following the movement of her head and shoulders. She started to walk down the street. Morgan took a stimhit and started to move. He went hyper-aware at this point. As she walked down the street, he traversed the walls using the fast-winds in a flurry of activity. He had her in his sight and, more for amusement than anything else, examined her ear-ring at highmag, noting the alien patterns. He dropped the resolution back to wide and scanned the area.
He saw a possible threat three miles away.
Morgan’s scope checked out the gang youths for hardware. He knew she could look after herself as she was an operative, the records showed this. He’d even seen her psych report. The phrase rang through his mind as he decided to play it safe and eliminate the gang. “These walls…” The gas slide on the 30-30 hissed slowly as the wastegates filtered the noise. Six rounds for six targets; clean but not even entertaining.
She would get to wherever she was going without any interruptions or threats. Those were his orders and he knew he would have no problem completing them. He scanned the skyline and saw a form on another building one mile away. He moved swiftly and aimed at the shape. He saw a small logo on the shoulder of the other wall-mounted operative and recognized it as the logo of Stigmartyr.
It was the same as the logo he had on his shoulder.
The other operative noticed him shortly after and nodded. So, they double-teamed on this one. Interesting.
She walked across the street and into an obscure-looking shop with arcane symbols at the doorway. Morgan signaled to the other operative, as he was closer, to enter the shop once she had left. He would escort her to her next destination. The operatives both froze, hardening their cami-sneak as soon as she went into the shop, both preparing for a long wait as gargoyles. Thankfully for them, they didn’t have to wait long.
She walked out of the building with a small package, carried in a brown biocard bag. The journey back to that door was uneventful and she returned to within the walls of the building. “These walls,” Morgan replayed her psych report in her head. “These oblong walls…”
Morgan saw her safely back and went home, hoping that another clue had been found in the arcane building, giving more information, saving lives.
Nikita turned to Legion, handing him his curry chicken and fried rice and dipped another prawn ball in the sweet and sour sauce.
“That’s the thing that bugs me about here. No Chinese restaurants…”
(c) 2000, Nightfall Games. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.
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