Contracts: Part 1
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1
The pub was dim. Smoke fogged the air and clouded the mind. Chairs crowded the floor, scattered indiscriminately by uncaring patrons. Music blared from every nook and cranny, but it was little more than white noise. The walls were grey, nondescript, bleak. Scratches and scrapes on the floor and bar were records of brawls gone by.
The fox in the corner had seen much of it, even joined in for some of it. He sat, hunched over a drink in the darkest of the shadowed corners. A black hood covered his face; all that was visible was the tip of a white muzzle. The paws that cradled his liquor were hidden in ebony gloves. A jet-black coat flowed from his wrists up to a thick, raised collar and down to his ankles. The top of a snowy-furred chest could be glimpsed over the top of the black shirt that he wore. His pants were jet black, the hems draped over black boots.
The door opened with a bang, allowing sunlight to catch the slightest glimpse of the scene of disarray and disinterest. A bulky tiger wearing a black suit and tie that threatened to tear with every movement strode through and scanned the room from behind darkened glasses. It took him three sweeps before he noticed the cloaked fox in the darkest corner. He slowly waded his way through the chaos and sat down opposite. "I understand you're the one to talk to about... removing... certain individuals." The fox's reply was an angry monotone, and the glint of bared teeth could be seen under his hood. "Not in public I'm not." "Then allow me to request a private audience." "Hotel Novo. Seventeen minutes from now. Room 512. Don't be late." He rose from his seat, slugged back what remained in his glass and slammed it back down on the table. "Good day to you." He strode out of the bar without a backwards glance, ignoring the tiger's indignant expression.
~
The hotel room contained within its cracked and faded walls nothing more than an ancient desk and two dilapidated chairs. The tiger opened the door to find the cloaked fox occupying one of them. "Please, sit. I believe you wanted to discuss business." The visitor moved to stand behind the unoccupied chair, his annoyance evident. "You've been awfully rude for a professio-" "Sir, you came here to conduct business. I intend to exchange neither pleasantries nor conversation. You want niceties? Find someone else. I'm assuming you came to me because you want a job done and done well." The tiger looked outraged, eyebrows falling into a scowl. He was on the verge of stalking out of the door. The cloaked man simply steepled his fingers and rested them in front of his muzzle, concealing a self-satisfied grin. Taking a deep breath, the visitor calmed his temper slightly. "Very well. You are Loki, yes?" "No. Loki is simply what people have come to call me." "...Indeed. The target I have for you is-" "Shaia Kinari, head of Cobalt Engineering." The tiger was flabbergasted. "Wh-... How did you-?!" "Where I get my information, Mr. Galed, is none of your concern." A look of fear flashed across Galed's face. Loki's grin spread wider, barely concealable now. "Mr. Galed?" Galed took another deep breath. Released it. "It is to look like an accident. No-one other than Shaia is to die. The manner of accident is up to you, but it is to be done within the month." Loki closed his eyes, running over numbers in his head. "My price is two million. Five-hundred thousand for the kill itself, five-hundred thousand for her being the only death, one million for making it look like an accident. Half payment now, half on confirmation of completion. I will... make contact if I do not receive payment within three hours of the accident being televised." Galed held out a paw. "You have a deal." Loki ignored the proffered pawshake and instead lifted a holographic sheet out of the desk top. "My payment details. The first deposit will go into the first account listed. You will do this now. The second deposit will go into the second account. I will contact you when I have fulfilled the contract." He watched intently with an unwavering gaze as Galed typed out the transfer details on the glowing, insubstantial sheet. The transfer was confirmed with an uncharacteristically happy ding. Gesturing to the door, Loki told Galed, "Our business here is complete. You may leave."
2
"Tragedy struck the prestigious Cobalt Engineering Firm today, as CEO Shaia Kinari perished in a fatal vehicular accident shortly after leaving her home. The Cobalt investigative teams have so far determined that the incident was caused by a power surge which damaged the vehicle's Tokamak powerplant, and-" Loki turned the holographic screen off with a wave, cutting the newsreader off mid-sentence. He glanced at the readout on his sleeve - three more hours until the payment deadline and he still hadn't received the remainder of his funds. Picking up an earpiece from the desk next to him, he spoke to the ship's AI. "Contact Galed." A ringing sound echoed around the room as a call was put through to his contact. There was a click and a tentative "Yes?" Loki replied in a monotone. "You have three hours until the deadline." He terminated the connection without waiting for a reply.
Lying on his bed in what had once been the maintenance bay; Loki listened to the lively hum and throb of the drive core just a few inches of metal away, a sound which had always calmed him. He studied the bulkheads above him, exploring the patterns and whorls in the metallic finish, all so familiar. Eyes drifting shut, he allowed his mind to wander, investigating unexplored avenues of thought, thinking, dreaming...
Behind his closed eyelids he began to go over the job that he had finished a full eleven hours ago, looking for any faults, definite or potential.
~
Shaia's suite took up the entire top floor of Cobalt's housing tower, a full ten minutes from the main Cobalt complex. He stood on the sidewalk outside, staring up the full two-hundred floors at his target. The rooftop parking pad. Getting up was the hard part. The tower was enveloped by a no-fly zone, three-hundred meters out in all directions - the only exception being the CEO's personal transport - making an aerial insertion an impossibility; anything larger than the native birds would be taken out by one of the many concealed autocannons. The first floor was the hardest. Lobby security was stringent, there was no way in other than being employed by Cobalt - the company even has its own maintenance team meaning impersonating a repair-man (the good, old-fashioned way of getting in) was out of the question. The slightest anomaly in belongings merited a strip-search, that much he'd seen from observing the building for the past three days, so sneaking in equipment would be difficult. No, the way in past ground-floor security was avoiding the ground floor altogether.
In the end he'd simply walked past the lobby security using an old favourite: Inertial boots, boots which use a complicated bit of physics (it was all beyond Loki) to counteract the effects of gravity, if only temporarily. He'd planned the insertion for 4AM; a time when the average mind is at its least attentive. Getting inside from there was easy. He used a conductive, acidic spray to burn his way through the glass on the outside, and avoid tripping the microcircuitry wired throughout the windows. Fiddling with the goggles he wore, Loki activated a scanning beam and a thin, luminescent blue line raced away up the corridor, highlighting the floor, and the walls at about ten meter intervals with a pulsing red. He swore. Crouching down he placed his paws on the edge of the hole the he had made, bracing against it before throwing himself against one of the walls. He gained his footing rapidly and sprinted down the corridor perpendicular to the ground. Hastily drawing a small pistol-shaped contraption from one of his pockets, he took aim and fired at one of the highlighted patches on the wall. Sparksflew as the camera beneath melted under the withering EMP burst. The next three patches along the wall also went dead, the wiring fried. He fired again, aiming at the floor this time as his boots gave a high-pitched whine in protest and he fell from the wall, landing in an angry heap in the middle of the patch of ground which he had cleared. Discharging the spent, smoking battery from his EMP pistol, he caught it in one paw, quickly slotting it back into his bag and pulling out a replacement. Taking careful aim he cleared another floor section and jumped, clearing the patch he was standing on as it came back online. Clearing and leap-frogging to another patch he slammed a fist into the wall, loosening a panel which dropped to the floor at his feet. Wrenching what looked like a stun-gun out of his bag, he stabbed it into the tangle of wires hidden within the wall and started frantically typing generic disconnect and shutdown codes into the readout on his sleeve, hoping against hope that the system was unsecured against at least one, but he had no luck. He sprang off the floor and sprinted across the ceiling as the floor returned to a dangerous, throbbing red. Loosing the last shot in his EMP pistol, he cleared it again, landed softly and set to work once more. Slipping through the security software, he looked for something to disconnect or otherwise disable the building's security system. A familiar piece of code flashed past. Desperately scrolling back, he highlighted it and sent it through. The floor below him flickered red, then the highlighted parts all down the corridor faded back to their normal colours. Wrenching the uplink tool from the cabling, he began erasing all of the traces of his presence, replacing the panel and quickly dry-painting over the slightly melted section of wall where the video camera had been. He placed a transparent panel in front of the hole he had made in the window, concealing it from casual examination, intending to be out before anyone noticed. Making his way to the banks of elevators at the end of the corridor, he examined the control panel closely. Rummaging in his bag for a few seconds, he came out with a replica of the panel and suctioned it into place over the actual one. The elevators would now be called by any code - not that anyone would notice. He swiped a paw over the pad and the doors opened to reveal an empty shaft. He sprang through as they snapped shut, landing on a rail on the opposite wall with a tiny, echoing clink of metal on metal. The shaft itself was a pristine white, stretching all the way from the basement levels up to Shaia's loft suite. He fiddled with a holographic interface on the palm of one of his gloves for a few brief moments - staying up through the virtue of magnets in his boots - before placing his paws either side of the rail and rocketing upwards, propelled by fluctuating magnetic fields in the gloves.
He flew towards the bottom of one of the elevators, nimbly leaping sideways onto the next rail moments before he would have met with painful, flattening death. He fiddled with the gloves again and a full-body black suit rippled out of the confines of his coat, covering him from ears to tail in a forensics-proof shell. Slowing to a stop just short of the top of the shaft he bounded from the rail and through the doors opposite which were open, as if he had been expected. The rooftop was dark, unlit. It was raining. Striding quickly to the car, Loki was once again rummaging through his bag. He came up with a slim circular object, a glint of silver in the tempest. Sliding under the vehicle on his back, he set to work.
In the half-hour he had allotted himself, he used the disk to fracture the Tokamak's casing and various sprays and chemicals to disguise it as natural and very old. He'd also tweaked the wiring in various places to generate a power surge to the reactant and blow out the cracked casing. This blowout would likely fry the emergency backup systems and cause a catastrophic failure of the gyromagnetics. After cleanup he replaced everything back exactly as he had found it, down to millimetre precision.
He made his way back down the same way he had gone up, riding the elevator rails down to the first floor. He removed his false panel from beside the elevator door and strode confidently back towards his entry point. Removing the transparent pane from the window, he moulded a clear resin around the irregular hole, making as neat a circle as possible. Producing the last thing from his bag, -a replacement piece for the window- he slotted it into place, erasing the last trace of his presence.
~
No, he could see no fault in the job, no reason for Cobalt to suspect a thing. He began to think aloud to himself. "So why haven't Falcon Tech come up with my funds? Do they want to see what I do to people who don't pay? It certainly makes the news often enough. I expected more from them."
One hour to the deadline he called Galed again. "I have received no additional funds. You have one hour left."
On the deadline he checked the account that he had given Galed. He called his contact again, for the last time. "Congratulations, you have worn out my not inconsiderable patience - although, you are not the first. Expect me."
__________________________________________________________________________
And so ends the first part (Chapters 1 and 2) of Contracts.
Please feel free to comment and rate, it means a lot to me to get responses to my writing!