Nate changed into the casual clothes that were hanging in the locker, leaving his own in their place. Unsurprisingly there were no tags or other identifying marks in the clothing and the clothes themselves were average, everyday wear that wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. Whoever was running this operation seemed to know what they were doing, which he certainly appreciated. After all, it was his ass that was on the line should something go wrong.
He picked up the hypo, hesitated a moment, then said “fuck it” aloud into the empty room and pressed the device against the inside of his wrist. There was the quick hiss of the injection followed by a moment of lightheadedness and then he was ready to go.
Nate hit the green button, stepped into the farcaster unit, and pulled the door shut.
He counted down from six to steady his nerves.
“Six…”
“Five…”
“Four…”
“Three…”
“Two…”
The world faded around him and the last thought he had on this side of the cast was to curse the sonofabitch who shorted him two seconds.
Nate stepped out of the utility closet into which he’d arrived and scanned the immediate vicinity, making sure no one had seen his exit.
He appeared to be in a train station somewhere; travelers were hustling to and fro with bags in their hands and a voice over the PA system was announcing that the 10:51 express was ready to depart on track 118.
The PCD in his pocket beeped. He took it out and glanced at the display, noting that it was showing a drop location less than fifty feet from where he was now standing. He followed the coordinates to their source, which, as he’d already guessed, turned out to be a self-storage locker.
He spent a moment or two pondering what the combination might be, then shrugged and punched in the street address of the Limbus building.
The lock popped open with a flat clang.
An information disk for his PCD sat on the shelf inside, next to a small stack of currency. He popped the chip into his PCD and absently stuffed the cash into his pockets while watching the information that came up on his screen.
The mission looked to be a relatively simple. He was supposed to wait outside a certain restaurant — address included — and photograph a meeting between two men. Photos of each of them had been provided for identification purposes. Nate studied them for a moment, committing their features to memory. He was certain he’d never seen either one of them before; not that it mattered in the long run. He would have done the job even if he’d known them for the last twenty years. A job was a job.
It went without saying that there was to be no contact with either individual. Once he had obtained the necessary photographs, he was to leave the vicinity as soon as possible and make his way back to the equipment drop. There he would receive the coordinates for the return trip.
The equipment drop contained a nylon backpack complete with a camera, telephoto lens, and press credentials from some rag called The Global Inquirer.
He slipped the credentials into the pocket of his jacket and slung the backpack over his shoulder, then made his way out of the station to the street beyond. A glance at his PCD told him he had less than twenty minutes to get into position, so he hustled to the front of the cab line and climbed into the first vehicle, slamming the door in the face of the woman he’d just cut in front of. He handed some cash to the driver to get him to ignore the angry shouts of the woman standing outside and told him he’d pay double the fare if the driver could get him to their destination in less than fifteen minutes.
Tires squealed and Nate was pushed back into his seat as the driver rose to the challenge.
The driver was too busy concentrating on navigating to be chatting, which Nate was thankful for. The car he was in was an older model, without any modern conveniences it seemed. Even the ads seemed ten years out of date, for heaven’s sake. But the cabbie knew the city and that’s all Nate really cared about. Exactly thirteen minutes and twenty-two seconds later, Nate was getting out of the cab a block from his final destination, having told the driver to pull over to reduce the chance of being seen. Not that he expected to be recognized by his targets, but why take the chance if it wasn’t necessary?
He walked the rest of the way to the restaurant and found a place to sit on a bench in a small park across the way. His position gave him a clear view of both the front entrance and the outdoor eating area on the side of the building. If his targets chose the former, he’d wander inside and get a table. If they chose the latter, he’d be in a perfect position to watch them while they ate.
In the end, it was all rather anticlimactic. The two men he was waiting for arrived a few minutes after he did. To his relief, they chose to eat outside, absolving him of the need to go inside and find a table. Instead, he didn’t have to do anything more than point the camera in their general direction; the telephoto lens got everything he needed with the touch of a button. It was so simple a child could have done it.
When he was satisfied that he’d gotten what he needed, Nate put the camera back into the pack and went to find another cab, which would take him back to the station. Once there, he put the backpack containing the camera back into the locker and hit the lock button.
Already thinking about the paycheck that came with the successful completion of the job, Nate went to find his farcaster home.
Over the course of the next three weeks Nate handled two more assignments. The first required him to pick up a package from the equipment locker, cross town to a hotel, and leave it for an incoming guest. The second involved breaking into an office building on the outskirts of the business district and removing several files from the company president’s office on the fifth floor. Both times he’d arrived with very little time to spare and had to hustle to get in position by the time indicated on his orders, but that was the only hiccup he encountered. Even the B&E didn’t bother him; they were paying him, and paying him well, to take risks on their behalf and the petty crime barely registered on his personal morality meter. He’d done far worse during his time in the service.
About a week after his third assignment, Nate was having breakfast in an upscale joint on 84th Avenue, the kind of place that was so high above his previous standard of living that three months ago he wouldn’t have even looked at it. A news clip on the screen behind the receptionist’s station caught his eye.
He tapped the controls next to his right hand and the screen embedded into his table top came to life.
“… for good behavior after serving ten years on espionage charges. Owens was caught on camera in a now famous photograph showing him exchanging documentation on the Raptor III drone-launched missile system with this man, Lee Fong, a member of a so-called Chinese trade delegation. Fong’s diplomatic credentials were revoked and he was expelled from this country immediately following the incident. At the time, Owens claimed that…”
Nate stared at the photograph on the screen—one of the photographs that he’d taken as his first job for Limbus!
A ten-year sentence? How in hell was that even possible?
A trial like that would take months just to get scheduled in front of a judge, never mind the additional months it would take to try the case. There was just no way. The newscaster must have misspoken.
But as Nate changed stations and listened to several other broadcasts, he realized that they were all saying the same thing. Owens was being released after serving a ten-year sentence for espionage. A sentence that was the result of a guilty verdict that had been obtained using the photographs that Nate himself had taken!