War Dance

ONE: Z9 - 1

Now this was just embarrassing.

It really doesn't matter how important the 'mission' is. It doesn't matter how many lives you'll save. It doesn't matter if you've got people chuntering in your ear, trying to give you updates on the movements of the people you're targeting. Undercover work is never fun, and undercover work when it's chucking it down, rain drilling into the top of your skull like a thousand tiny hammers, is rightly something to get bloody well pissed about.

Nevertheless, regardless of how badly she wanted to get inside and get a coffee, she had to stay out on the platform. Sit on the bench, look at something on the Halo-Core, don't worry, he won't recognise you because we've dyed your hair blonde. You'd be surprised how easy it is to trick someone, especially if they're not looking for a C.A.T agent. Remember the old expression; don't run if you're not being chased.

'That's all very well and good,' Z9 muttered to herself under her breath, 'but you could at least give me a warmer coat.'

'We gave you an option of a coat,' Carmen said through the Halo-Chip in her ear. 'You, however, said it didn't go with your dress.'

'It didn't. Mark23 will back me up on that. He, at least, understands the idea of decent fashion. Too mis-matched and you stand out like a sore thumb.'

'We're going to have to stop you two hanging out together. It's getting incredibly irritating.'

Z9 took a sip of her kofi and cast a casual glance around her. The Region 15 Grand Magna-Station had recently been done up, yet despite this, they hadn't exactly modernised it. It was still irritatingly bland, with white walls and a great front of glass with an admittedly stunning view of The Great Arch Monument overlooking the tops of the buildings a few streets down. If they'd bothered to consider the welfare of the people waiting for the trains they were housing, and closed off the tops of the platforms, they might have been in Z9's better books. As it was, however, all they'd done was ensure that the constant thunderous drumming of the deluge was on the platform, always threatening to splash the legs of those stood waiting without an umbrella.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe it forces everyone into the cafes, spend their money. I wonder how much goes to the chains and how much to the station? Maybe an interesting article in there, somewhere.

Z9 had given a lot of thought to article writing in the recent weeks. Taking every excuse to keep out of the limelight of espionage action, she'd read up a lot on every topic imaginable, ranging from art theory to quantum mechanics to celebrity culture. She didn't understand a lot of it, and remembered even less, but that was beside the point. She wanted time away from the corporate cloud, the one that hung lower and lower and heavier and heavier over her with every passing month, every week even. Shit was happening out there, and before long she would be dragged into it once again. When she was, she wanted to be the best person she could be. Intelligent. Refined. Knowledgeable. Cultured. Having done something with her life. Every time she looked out of the window from her Region 11 apartment, she saw the planet's towers thrusting up to a space black and foreboding and they seemed to be getting closer each time. Not that the buildings were getting larger, but the dark hand of the abyss was slowly coming down to meet them.

Z9 had survived a number of close calls and quick scrapes, but one could only have so many. There was, she felt, a sand timer that had recently been overturned, and she didn't have too many grains left to fall through.

So she sat and sipped the kofi which was, somehow, better than she'd expected (I'll have to taste-test different cafes to bolster my arguments for this article) and she waited. She glanced up to the large clock nearby. Three minutes until the train arrived.