The Sleeper
Velshia hummed pleasantly as she meandered the streets. Fiddling with buttons on the inside of her straps. Keeping one eye out for either the Jackrabbit or his layer and the other eye on learning the lay of the land. Unfortunately, only the clergy back home had the right to paint the third eye, the eye of dreaming, upon their head. So, she was forced to rely on only her two eyes to find a safe house. The squalor all around barely even touched her. It wasn't the idea of being above it or more important than it, but just the simple facts that she could not do anything about it, currently, and that any emotional attachment to it would not help her achieve the mission objectives.
A smile grew on her lips as memory lapsed across reality. Blurring the lines of the dilapidated road with the large, towering trees along with dense clusters of pools. Mist and fog swirled around. Crowding in about the girl swished her arms through them.
"Velshia." Her Mother's voice penetrated the land-ridden clouds. Immediately, Velshia snapped her arms back into a meditative position. "You must not get distracted, Velshia. The mists swirl and delight. When you revel with it, so too will everyone know your revel. To stride unobserved, you must become as the mist, as the forest. Align your world to the world and those who walk in that world will only see the blinding fog. Even when you stand straight before them."
"Yes, Mother." The child Velshia didn't truly grasp what all that meant. Not yet. But she knew enough to get started and so she pondered the mist. She didn't lose herself in it. Did not marvel. Instead, she considered how it swirl, swayed, and occluded all eyes. Hours passed and still Velshia sat, rigid as a board, eyes closed. Then she began to sway. Flowing with the invisible ghost of an untouchable breeze that still drifted the mist ever so slightly this way, then that. Her breathing a mirror to the soundless breeze.
"Very good." Her Mother's voice slid through the mist. "One day, little one, we shall teach you to be mist with your eyes wide open."
Velshia shook her head with a chuckle. What would her parents say if they knew she were reminiscing on the job? Well, to be fair, she didn't need to even imagine it. Very stern words would be winging their way to her ears. With these thoughts buoying her up, Velshia immediately dragged her head down. Her four arms clutching her pack tightly to her back. Velshia's feet became a furtive shuffle while her eyes darted around with equal parts fear, depression, and desperation. Velshia, Akorra, needed a job. And needed it yesterday. There hadn't been any work in the last city over last month. But here. Here had to work, it just had too! There wasn't anywhere left to go…
Akorra, the drifter of three years, ever since the Kuadar corporation collapsed under a gang war, desperately sought work. Hard laborer, bartender, bouncer, mechanic, anything! Well…almost anything. Not a…slut. Never a slut! She wasn't some cheap whore who spread her legs for a crust of bread. Akorra's stomach growled. Warning her that that day wasn't too far off. Not anymore. She'd find a job here, she was sure of it! Desperation was the mother of drive and no one was more driven than she was right now.
Then, she saw it, light from the heavens it seemed as, blazing in the window of glitzy decayed establishment were the simple words: HELP WANTED! Yet, even as Akorra's eyes stared hungerly at it, she hesitated. True, she needed work. But her pride still held in one field and if the help wanted was in that field… Furtively, Akorra scurried towards one of the windows. Trying to peer inside. Not tinted! Success.
Inside was one of the most garish nightclubs ever laid eyes on. A broad, raised dance floor stood in the middle of the room. From where she stood, Akorra couldn't quite see the top of it, but knew what it must be due to its size. Scattered below it and on balconies on the second and third floors were numerous tables. Crowded together with barely enough room for anything Velshia's size to squeeze between. The floor and walls were a dark purple, hiding who knew what stains. The walls glittered as preschooler's glue project but was probably meant to be stars. To offset the shadow of the purple, bright, neon flashing lights that struck out through the dim. Drunk, or high, customers probably found it psychedelic. Akorra found it nauseating. A broad bar stood at the far side of the room, below a shielded DJ box. Scattered about were various doors. Some, undoubtedly, led to the employee sections. Others would be VIP. Akorra shuddered to think as to what happened behind those doors. Still, the lack of poles suggested that this wasn't a stripper joint. At least the front of house wasn't. But that was enough for her. Its name was the "Dancing Bunny" with the neon symbol of a person with terra's rabbit ears on their head, high kicking.
Akorra slipped inside the closed club and was immediately accosted by a massive bouncer squeezed into body armor. Uncomfortably, Akorra noted that the brute had not only a stun stick, but a fully automatic weapon on its hip. Not that it really needed either as the monster had enough muscle to crush Akorra's skull between two of its seven fingers. However, of all its brute strength, Velshia noted as Akorra's eyes darted once to the hulking face as rugged as broken granite, it was not a dullard. Intelligence sparked behind those black eyes.
"Closed," it grunted.
"I..iwansomwor," Akorra mumbled to floor. Clinging tightly to her pack.
"Closed. Leave."
"I want some work!" Akorra desperately shrieked as the bouncer took a thundering step closer. Both trying not to cower and raise her arms to ward off a blow that seem sure to come.
"Hmm. Stood ground. Enough. Come. Vedice like you." The bouncer took earthquaking steps towards the bar and Akorra scurried after. Both terrified of the creature yet more frightened of being left alone in the shut down club. A number of the workers' looks were less than kind and more than a bit hungry. Through the doors next to the bar and through a short maze of halls to a rear elevator. Up three floors and then out onto a poshly laden hall. Yet they didn't go through the richly emblazoned blast doors at the far end of the hall. Instead, they turned aside to a door that could have led to a broom cupboard and, instead, led to an equally cramped office without a window.
"What is it?" a man's voice scratched out from a mouth with a balding head. Tufty brown hair lay plastered with too much grease upon his skull as he looked up. "I'm busy, Rauncorn."
"Job applicant," the bouncer, apparently called Rauncorn, said.
"Eh? Where, ah. Dwarfing them as always. You! Front and center," his command held surprising force behind the weak face. Akorra obeyed in an instant. He walked about her. Eyeing her up and down with the same appraisal as a merchant examining for counterfeits crossed with a vulture eyeing a potentially delectable carcass. "Hmm, yes. Pretty enough. After a bit of cleaning. Name?"
"Akorra Renshar."
"Age?"
"Twenty-three."
"You're eighteen."
"Eighteen."
"Held platters? Served drinks?"
"Yes."
"Danced?"
"No, never!" With a sudden whip of defiance.
"Hmm, so that's how you stood. We'll see how it lasts. You start tonight. Boarding is half your pay so…seventeen Katucks a-day you take away. Unless you have other living arrangements…"
"No! Here is fine."
"Good. Now get down to the third floor for examination and your room. Put her with El."
It was just before they reached the elevator that it happened. The door slid open and twenty armed and armored guards spilled out. Clearing the room with professional mercenary grace and aiming at least three guns at her. Akorra immediately shrank to Rauncorn's side, but Velshia was only mildly interested in the guards. Far more intriguing was the two people being guarded. Or, more likely, the one being guarded who had had an escort on his arm. The Jackrabbit leered at Akorra before comfortably adjusting the escort's position and bellowing, "Oy! Buzzard! Get out here!"
Out scurried Mr. Buzzard with a simpering, "yes Master Jackrabbit?"
"Get drinks and entertainment sent up. I feel like lounging before tonight's entertainment. The numbers are going up and up and I feel like treating myself."
"Yes, Master," Buzzard bowed.
Akorra and Rauncorn remained rooted to the spot as the guard squad, escort, and target made their way into what Velshia now knew to be the Jackrabbit's personal suite in the club. If Akorra weren't so terrified, Velshia would have smiled.
***
One thoroughly embarrassing cavity exam later and Velshia stood alone in her room. "Wondrous are the gifts of Cassadrel, who, unseen by the mists, drapes boons upon her beloved," she hummed. The room was a cramped hovel for two with the amenity of a bathroom attached as an afterthought. It didn't have a window. Didn't want people jumping to their deaths when it became too much. Better to work them into oblivion. There was no question of being observed and the answer had already been rebuked. Taking a half-hour of being in various positions across the room had given the cameras all the footage she needed to loop endlessly. Certainly, her roommate, El, would need to be looped in. But, for now, this was enough. The engineers of the
INS Ophelia had done their work well. Breaking down and disguising the various computers that she needed inside of gel-food packs, rustic sleeping bag, and other such oddities that, while they had been searched, scanned, and sorted from her bag, had not been torn apart to reveal the computerized innards. As ever, people believed what they saw.
Velshia was now waiting for the response from the rest of her team while twiddling on her pad. Checking up on all the various free hotspots her programs had flown to. Data mining everything of relevance. Others began launching probing attacks against numerous firewalls for monitoring systems, security scanners, high profile accounts, taxi systems, waste management, anything that could begin to formulate into plans just beginning to percolate in her mind. 99.8% of all her attacks against hardened systems had failed. No surprise. You didn't survive here without a decent firewall and all her attacks, so far, were pretty much spam. Nothing that could be easily traced and easily blended in with the uncountable billions of cyberattacks from all the gangs, criminal organizations, "legitimate" corporations, and everything that attempted to pass as law enforcement. Again, no one survived without at least a decent firewall. The only one she had determinedly sliced into was this…establishment. And not fully. Its bank accounts, VIP rooms, and the Jackrabbit's personal suite were thoroughly robust. And that suite was a borderline cyber fortress. Probably a literal one too. The camera system for the club wasn't and she had everything outside those shiny, secured gems. Speaking of the Jackrabbit and his protection, those twenty guards were visible, so it was a question as to how many were not visible. After all, only the supremely hubris beings or the supremely well-protected would be so brazen with both their claim and their body.
Velshia smiled. She was certainly rather enjoying herself. Would it be best to follow the little hare or to try and intercept him as he moved between fortresses. Undoubtedly, he had his own, personal entrance to the club. Velshia was likely smack dab in the middle of his turf. Perfect! Maybe they aught to penetrate the fortresses after narrowing down the locations of the hare's homes. She had signaled the team, covertly, the news and lay out her current work schedule. It would be best for them to show up as a rich patron with his, or its, personal security. Then they could discuss some plans, right under the gross hare's nose! The simplest would be for Elazor to be a crude, grasping patron who Akorra couldn't quite say no to. Yes, that would be simplest and account for most wild cards. One card that wasn't accounted for was El. At that moment, her proximity senser pinged a silent alarm. In a flash, the pad with stowed away and, a moment later, the door burst open. Akorra whirled and scrambled back in alarm as a ball of energy in the form of a human shot into the room with incoherent words of excitement.
"Ooo, hello! Rauncorn said I had a new roommate! I'm Elle, or El. It's a delight to meet you! What's your name? What are you? Oops! Sorry! Rude, rude El. Where are you from? How'd you come here? It's amazing here, isn't it! All the glitz and the glam. And aaaallll the famous people come here. It's only a matter of time before someone sweeps me away, don't you think? Up into the shiny high rises. Said it to my previous roomie, Natallia. Said it to her, 'just hang in there for a few more weeks and you'll be swept up too!' Happens all the time here. Yes it does, it does indeed. Only a matter of time for me! Well don't be a stranger, cause they're friends I haven't met yet and I'd love to have met you!" spilled in a torrent from El's mouth.
Velshia was almost impressed as to how a bastion of naivety had somehow lasted this long. Akorra fumbled out, "I'm…uh, muh name's Akorra."
"Akorra. Akorrrra. Oh, how delightful! We'll be fast friends, I'm sure. Have you seen what we wear? Let's get it on. Need to make sure you're ready for tonight. Who knows, maybe tonight will be the night for you or me!"
Velshia let El ramble on as Akorra got swept up in the tidal wave of energy. El was young. Human with a small face but large amber eyes and the beginnings of an hourglass body. Mousey brown hair framed numerous freckles around her eyes. Allowing the camera in the room to record normally, Velshia mentally added El, the 'roomie,' to her web of possibilities. 'Strangers were friends you just haven't met yet.' A quaint notion that was almost mirrored by an idiom of Intelligence: 'strangers were assets you just haven't figured out how to exploit yet.' Velshia smiled on the inside. This was going to be simply wonderful.
