She’d made no progress on Zephyr.
Lila clicked on a blinking red tab in her snoop program. Someone had stumbled upon a piece of her Prolix identity during t
he night, some dusty part of the net she had some measure of control over, but not enough. She had received the alert around two o’clock, and her programs had taken note of the user.
Lila pushed her cookies away. It could have been anyone, but she knew the timing didn’t bode well. Zephyr had slipped through the outermost layer of her fake identity while she slept.
It was the first chink in Prolix’s armor.
No one had ever gone beyond the first few.
Lila hopped up and paced. There were only eleven more layers of protection between Prolix and Zephyr. Once the snoop burrowed through them, Zephyr would possess enough information to figure out her identity.
Lila pulled out her still-ashy Colt from a drawer and disassembled the gun, spreading the pieces out upon her desk, a task that always calmed her. For the next hour, she cleaned and lubricated each piece until the weapon looked brand new. Sliding fresh darts into the chambers, she carefully aligned the sensors. She didn’t trust the old ones. It was the sensor that ejected the proper dose of sedative into each target through the needle, stopping its work based on the target’s heartbeat, estimated weight, imbalance, and lurching steps. If the chip was damaged before it struck or gummed up by ash, the dart might inject too much sedative or not enough.
She needed her targets to go down swiftly. She couldn’t handle a fair fight. She couldn’t even handle an unfair one.
After she’d cleaned and prepped her gun, Lila dressed in black workout pants and a gray tank with the words Randolph Militia scrawled across her breasts. She buttoned her blackcoat atop it, then stuffed her Colt and short sword into a gym bag.
Padding out into the hallway and down the grand staircase, she cocked an ear. Only Ms. O’Malley shuffled around the first floor of the great house, making her morning tea and fetching the breakfast linens and china. The half-deaf, half-blind woman was easy to avoid.
Sergeant Galen was as well. The man posted before the great house was far too chatty and cheerful so early in the morning, and Lila usually hopped the fence that enclosed the house just to avoid him. She then darted down Villanueva Lane, which ran from the great house, past the security office, and out through the southern gate of the compound.
The dark sky loomed above Lila while she traveled, shivering in the cold, damp air. The wind shook the trees that lined the streets. Golden leaves rained down, brushing her cheeks and lodging in her hair.
Up ahead, a pair of blackcoats stopped in the dim light of a street lamp, out of curiosity rather than suspicion. There was only one blackcoat who traveled from the great house to the Randolph security office, and she rarely left before seven unless there was a reason.
Lila brushed past the patrols, offering a curt nod, and climbed the stairs to the security office. Rising twelve stories, the building housed the estate’s security offices, their training facilities, as well as the barracks and private apartments of the Randolph militia. The coat of arms, two wolves straining and howling in opposite directions, had been sculpted into the front door, welded seamlessly into the steel.
The white tiles in the lobby had been scrubbed and polished during the night. Steel arches hung askew at all angles around the large space like a bird’s nest rising in the center of the hollow building. A spiral staircase snaked around the center, climbing up the first ten floors. Four glass elevators traveled up and down the building, positioned to the north, east, west, and south of the lobby. They carried travelers to the top of the structure, upon which a bright dome strained toward the sky, like a child’s bubble longing to break free.
The elevators only went to the top two floors if you had the proper key. Lila slid hers into the slot and rode to the eleventh floor, peeking through the glass walls of each office as she climbed higher and higher.
Everything seemed exactly as it should.
With a beep, the elevator’s doors opened into the reception area of the plush front office. She didn’t bother to turn on the lights; she merely strode through the right hand door, passed through her admin’s office, and flipped on the switch in hers. It would be two or three hours before Commander Sutton and the rest of her staff arrived for work.
Her office had been decorated in much the same way as her bedroom, for the same interior designer had worked on both. Inside was an ebony desk and coffee table, a black couch with a few red throw pillows, and a comfortable black leather desk chair. The designer had used the same color scheme on her private quarters on the twelfth floor, a floor she shared with the commander. Or would have shared, had the chairwoman allowed Lila to move into the chief’s quarters.
Instead, Lila used it infrequently to nap, to shower, and to change clothes.
She dropped her bag in her office and returned downstairs into the brightly lit gym on the basement level. A running track circled the building. She warmed up with a few laps, then switched to the obstacle course that ran along the outside. The gym master changed the course on a weekly basis to keep her from boredom and keep her skills sharp. She hopped over foam-covered fire hydrants and park benches, jumped atop stair rails, swung across beams, scrambled atop platforms, and leapt to the next, landing in a roll, all the while keeping up her pace. Since she was lousy in a fight, her policy was to run quickly, hide often, and carry a big gun filled with lots of darts.
Before leaving the gym, she hit the weights and stretched, smiling as her limbs loosened all the knots she’d born the day before.
Her stomach growled as she worked, but the cafeteria wouldn’t open for another hour.
Lila took a shower in her apartment, changed into a spare uniform, and returned to her office. Several messages from Tristan blinked on her palm. She deleted them all without reading them, then paced around the room sweeping for bugs.
Then she inspected every cabinet looking for cookies.
Sighing heavily when she only found an empty packet, she settled at her desk. Mornings were the best time to catch up on paperwork. She’d only just gotten through half her inbox when a knock sounded upon her door.
“Come in,” Lila called out, checking her watch. Two hours had passed.
Commander Sutton strode in and plopped herself in a chair across from Lila. “You were in early.”
“Playing catch-up,” Lila said, tossing a folder down upon her desk and threading her fingers. “Although I never got to the catch-up part, so I suppose I lost the game. Any news from the other properties during yesterday morning’s holo-conference?”