Lies
She left the table briskly and headed for the door. She gave the
bartender a barely perceptible nod as she passed. He lowered his eyes in acknowledgement and turned away. Glancing over her shoulder, she
could see that Thorne already had the dossier out.
"Poor bastard," she muttered under her breath. "He
doesn't know what he's getting himself into this time."
Bracing herself for the stagnant, filthy atmosphere outside, she
replaced her goggles and shot through the door. The spinner door was already
open, waiting for her. The air had a dusty orange tinge to it - reflections
of the now setting sun. The spinner itself was bathed in the bloody
glow. The open door of the spinner seemed to breathe with a life of its own,
the entrance to Dante's Inferno.
"Get me out of here," she crisply commanded the driver.
"Take me home."
The spinner rose from its hellish berth and headed away from the
Sushi Tower. Her sharp eyes watched it slowly vanish into the haze. She
closed her eyes and commanded herself not to think about what she had just
done. That would come later. She knew she would not sleep that night.
There was plenty of time for her to think while trapped in the deep recesses
of the twilight hours.
She opened her eyes as the spinner touched down in front of her
building. The street level activity was business as usual - wet, filthy, teeming
with a life all its own. As the spinner door opened, the dank stench
penetrated through her respirator. Dark forms skittered around her feet as
she hurried into the lobby toward the elevator.
"This is a secured facility. Please state your name."
The monotone from the elevator surveillance computer always irritated
her.
"Ruebyk, Alexia"
A pause.
"Visual scan and voice recognition survey complete. You may
proceed."
The elevator doors opened, and Alexia slipped inside just as the
doors began to close.
"98827," she instructed. She leaned wearily against the
back wall as the elevator silently carried her upward to her penthouse apartment.
She had just finished ripping off her head gear when the elevator doors
opened directly at her apartment door. She stepped out of the elevator
into the dimly lit entryway. The elevator doors closed and the concealing
wall slid down in its tracks with a whisper, eliminating any evidence of the
egress.
The blinking red signal light from the vidphone stabbed out at her
from its perch inside the living room.
"Increase illumination," she sighed, and the wall sconces
began to caress the walls with a muted shade of pale yellow. "No, not so damned
cheery. Adjust." The pale yellow faded into a soft green, then to a
dusky blue. "Stop."
She dropped her head gear on the Persian carpeted floor and strode
toward the vidphone. She didn't have to retrieve the message. She didn't
even bother to sit down. She punched in the private number.
"And?" the voice from the vidphone queried. The screen
remained blank.
"He's got the files," she retorted.
"He actually showed up?"
"Of course. He trusts me."
"And you told him ...."
"I told him exactly what I was supposed to tell him."
"And he believed you?"
"Look, I've known Thorne long enough to know which buttons
to push. We went over this before. The scenario I played out was all he needed to
bite. That, and the money."
"Good."
The vidphone transmission abruptly terminated.
Options
Option 1 - Alexia
Ruebyk
Option 2 - Alan Thorne takes
his leave
Option 3 - The
voice on the vidphone
Option 4 - The Inner Circle
Pages in white continue the story. Pages
in yellow are yet to be written. Note that the unwritten
options are just suggestions for how the story might continue
- you can add something completely different if you like.
Each page in the story ends in a five letter
code. If you want to return to this page in the future, make
a note of the page code and you will then be able to change
your URL to take you straight back to that page.
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Date: 2002-05-31 21:00
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