Junior Agent Dawkins hurried through the central hall of the Panopticon, only sparing a brief moment to look up at the enormous stylized eyeball suspended in the center of the space. It, several meters in diameter and with brilliant gold highlights, lazily rotated around all day, suspended by subtly disguised field projectors, and when the sun lined up just right, a pillar of light would shine down though one of the many circular windows and illuminate it perfectly.

Of course, he’d been told it was purely decorative—nothing more than modern dynamic. Still, as he crossed the smooth tiles, he could’ve sworn he saw the massive sphere twitch in his direction that interrupted its lazy and idle random motion. Dawkins hastened his steps ever so slightly, and the clacking of his footsteps echoed sharply across the monolithic stone atrium.

Half a minute, two sliding doors later, and one rather invasive security scanner later, he’d made it.

“Ah, welcome Dawkins,” an older woman—the local Director—said, “take a seat, take a seat.”

He did so, briefly casting his gaze across the others in attendance. They were mostly regular agents like him, all skewing towards the “junior” end of the hierarchy, however there were also some shadowy figures at the edges of the room which he studiously ignored, as he’d been trained by his mentor.

Two minutes later, when the meeting was officially scheduled to start, the Director took her designated spot at the focus of the assembled intelligence officers and began to speak.

“Alright. Before we begin, you’ve all got the notes—any last-minute changes?”

Nobody said anything, so she continued.

“Let’s get started then: the subject today is talent scouting at IEI. First, let’s hear from Agent Michelson—revised projections on the highborn candidates?”

An older man, and one with various accoutrements and insignias bedazzling his uniform which indicated a more senior status, strode over to the presenters lectern, cleared his throat and started to speak.

“Thank you, Director. Overall, there haven’t been any big moves or major readjustments—the overall projections on the selected candidates remain favorable. Since our last update, there’ve been...”

Dawkin’s attention wandered as the senior agent prattled on about the contingent of highborn newly inducted at IEI that he was responsible for keeping an eye on. Personally, he didn’t think they held that much potential. Not this seasons candidates specifically, but the whole crop in general. Now, this was only his opinion, and while it could never be said that they were unskilled or incompetent, they—the highborn—typically lacked the spark or the drive that drove truly good assets. They were people who’d been given everything, but in that process, their ability to truly fight for something with unwavering resolve had typically been lost in all but the rarest cases.

Not that Dawkins shared this opinion openly with many people, he was just a Junior Agent after all.

No, in Dawkin’s experience, the best assets and even agents were those who came from a couple steps removed: those who had the dream to rise up, the grit to pull through, and the drive to fight for every millimeter. People who had grit.

Approaching someone like a branch-family noble was ideal. They’d usually gotten that seductive taste of power; seen it and possibly sampled it too, but they knew that reaching the heights of might that the highborn started out at would require the concentrated effort of a lifetime. They knew it would be an interminable slog, requiring monumental effort and a non-insignificant portion of luck.

This frequently made them ideal for recruitment. They had the technical skills, social acumen, and simple experience that was required to navigate the often-myriad structure of power, influence, and interpersonal relationships that dominated Imperial hierarchy effectively while still respecting the structure and being devoted to the cause. A second-stringer noble could be inducted into the more secretive branches of the Imperium like the Agency or the Inquisition and do a damn fine job—just like Dawkins himself had been.

Hell, he thought, even the spookier arms of the Imperium like CODA—

Dawkins shuddered and quickly cleared his mind at this thought, and very carefully didn’t look at the CODA operative with the deep hood and in the shadowed corner. Of course, he knew that CODA operatives being able to read people’s minds was a myth, but they were formidable and represented an opportunity if he could swing his pitch properly.

Regardless, thoughts about his upcoming presentation drove his thoughts in the direction of his latest and most promising project: The new IEI Neophyte Issa Pyxis.

She’d been a strange case, and something of a last-minute addition to boot, but she might turn out to be a downright fantastic asset and—

“Dawkins? You’re up” a the Directors authoritative voice into his musings, and suppressing the slight startle he’d been given, he smoothly rose to his feet and stepped up to the presenter’s lectern. Once there, he mentally reshuffled his notes, and jumped right into it.

“Good morning, everyone. At the last meeting, I presented some preliminary analysis on those IEI inductees assigned to me, and while I’ve continued monitoring all of them, after the interest expressed last time, I started digging deeper into CAN-ID 69737361 named Issa Pyxis.”

“Some background for those who weren’t at that meeting: at the time we added her to the IEI roster on merit-basis after she scored an 11.2 on the Standard Imperial Merit Assessment—” That definitely got some raised eyebrows, “—and since she’s started at IEI, her academic performance has only gotten better, which combined with the fact that lineage-wise she’s a complete nobody, is quite impressive put lightly.”

In fact, when one of the various automated talent scouting routines had laid this particular candidate’s profile on us desk, he’d at first assumed clerical error. An 11.2 was technically possible, but had only been achieved or exceeded a handful of times since the inception of this particular standardized exam.

“Normally, and where we were left off at the last meeting, this type of profile would have Science Team stamped all over it, but I’ve done some investigation and found something interesting.”

At this point, Dawkins made a subtle gesture, and the presentation dataset he’d prepared was made available to all the meeting’s attendees and projected on the large AR display behind him. The dataset displayed, and in a format easily readable by everyone in the room, an intelligence-map containing interconnected pieces of information from varied sources, most of it centered on Issa Pyxis and a green emblem that wasn’t immediately recognizable.

“Notably, in this case, the candidate has extensive ties to a mid-sized organized crime syndicate, locally referred to as ‘the Emerald Ones’. More specifically, there’s convincing evidence that paints her as the current leader of this group.”

After that, even the eyebrows who’d been holding out were forced to raise themselves in surprise.

“Dawkins, sorry to interrupt, but are you telling me that this girl is managing to be both be a small-time crime-lord and top-of-her-class at IEI?”

“Yes.” Dawkins simply stated. Then, after a short and suitably dramatic pause, he continued.

“Put simply, this new information completely rewrites the character profile we have on her! Before this new information, her profile depicted a reclusive and somewhat timid genius—the type of brainiac who wouldn’t need much more than well-equipped lab and a healthy budget to live happily and serve the Imperium well. Now though, her profile’s been almost completely inverted: she’s ruthless, extremely subtle, and highly ambitious if judging from and extrapolating her group’s latest actions.”

He pulled up a new diagram.

“For example, during the pickup, several anomalies were detected including the fact that she was armed with an unlicensed weapon and that, upon later investigation, her ‘home’ was clearly an infrequently visited safehouse. Now, after what intelligence suggests was some sort of internal power struggle—likely linked to her leaving—a man named ‘Aleksander’ is acting as her hand in controlling the gang.”

He had the undivided attention of the meetings attendees.

“How is she doing this? Well...”

At this, Dawkins once again enlarged some imagery displaying a network traffic chart.

“As you can see here, the network bandwidth she pulls is rather large, and, twice a day, she exchanges some very large files and engages in activities that look like direct VR-casting to the traffic analyzer. I suspect she’s holding extended sessions in virtual with the syndicate’s leadership team to provide instructions and direction.”

After clearing his throat to capture attention, one of the more senior agents spoke up, “Do we know what exactly this traffic is? Have we gotten eyes into these Virt sessions?”

Dawkins grimaced internally, because the answer was no. He had to deploy “the euphemism”.

“Unfortunately, the exact contents of the network traffic are out-of-scope for this project.”

After all, he couldn’t say that there was something he couldn’t do as an Agent of the Imperium. There were simply things that were too expensive to do. It wasn’t Dawkins’ fault that the encryption schemes that were being used by Issa were, in his opinion, frankly ridiculous. He also neglected to mention that even the most powerful decryption assets he had access to had just barely been able to run the traffic analysis, and even those results were questionable.

That’s why when something couldn’t be done, it was declared “out of scope for this project” and either the matter would be dropped or he’d be given more budget.

“Any treasonous ties? Rebellion? Insurgency?” someone else asked.

“Unlikely.” Dawkins replied, relieved that apparently nobody was pressing him on the decryption topic, “Our historical records on the ‘Emerald Ones’ indicate that they’ve occasionally done second degree-business with Rebellion-adjacent actors, but even the closest tie is very likely inconsequential—a minor weapons deal two years ago.”

With a slight grin, he continued, “Also, I checked in with some of our deep-cover sources, and according to them, she’s never reached out.”

This caused a bit of a chuckle to go through the assembled Agents. After all, it was basically an open secret within the more secretive arms of Imperial power that the “Rebellion” and even the “Insurgency” were little more than puppet entities to contain the malcontents and keep an eye on them. They where tolerated, carefully observed, and when necessary, pruned to a more manageable size.

“How about her Spacer heritage? Any special considerations there?”

Ah, Dawkins thought. This was a question he’d been waiting for.

“Well, both her parents were Spacers who were stranded in the Imperium as a side-effect of the Guild War, yet they were rather ironically killed in a terrorist attack when she was still a child—in fact, I posit this event is what has kept her away from the more treasonous avenues of crime and it implies a certain loyalty and alignment with the Imperium’s goals—something we would definitely be able to leverage in any recruitment attempt.”

“As for any special heritage conditions, I suspect that her brain is heavily ‘ware augmented and medical records from her childhood indicate this too. Unfortunately, she’s shielded rather which prevents passive scanning, but if we extrapolate from Spacers with similarly advanced body-templates, we can expect cranial ‘ware similar to that which you’d find in the upper echelons today: memory enhancers, non-stim-based reaction speed and thought speed boosters, creativity multiplexers, the works.”

Here Dawkins included another pause before he breached the next, slightly uncomfortable topic.

“Fortunately, she can’t have had access to any spacer-made ‘ware since shortly after her birth, so it’s nigh impossible that she’s gotten any of the more… heretical upgrades that some of those radicalist types from the war had. In fact, passive scans indicate that she has hardly any ‘ware or extremely tweaked biologicals below the neck, so it’s likely that she’s still running off of inherited systems—systems that are likely showing their age and with major incompatibility issues to the types of ‘ware available to her. Offering top-quality ‘ware could be another avenue of access to loyalty in this case.”

This latest declaration had caused minor murmuring to spread through the room, before the Director spoke once again.

“Alright Agent Dawkins, you’ve certainly presented some interesting new information. Could you give us a quick summary and suggest some next steps?”

He nodded.

“Yes Director. What we’ve got here is certainly a unique opportunity. At first glance, the candidate is technically skilled enough to be a worthwhile investment regardless, and if cultivated properly, could result in a peerless science or engineering asset.”

Deep breath.

“Looking deeper though, it is revealed that the candidate is far more versatile than the initial appraisal would indicate. While she lacks explicitly combat-focused ‘ware and certainly isn’t a super-solider by any stretch of the imagination, her leadership role in managing a criminal syndicate—albeit a minor one—indicates a certain degree of ruthlessness, ambition, and operational skills which drastically widen her potential applications as an asset.”

Deep breath.

“For example, if her shortcomings in ‘ware were shored up and if she were provided with the right training, she could become a near-peerless infiltrator or field-technical-specialist. Her—”

A quiet, yet cutting and clearly audible voice cut in from the back of the room: “We’ll take her.”

It was the cowled CODA representative.

Externally, Dawkins gulped, but internally, he cheered. CODA were undeniably spooky, but if the candidate panned out the way he thought he thought she would, CODA’s finder’s fees were… substantial.

Nodding, he acknowledged the comment and moved on.

“Very well. The next candidate…”