Ivan wiped imaginary sweat from his bald head. “Those are the real orders. Well, more specifically, we are to somehow get into the wine cellar of this house where the meeting is to be held. We must poison the top bottle of ’724 Colaron, as that’s his favourite drink. We can’t be caught in the cellar, and the bottle has to be resealed after we’re done and replaced on the shelf. We also have a file on another person we have to try and shoot, by the name of Harron Egil. He’s just some minor criminal. We don’t even need to kill him, the important thing is that they think the target is him. The time of the meeting is an hour after sunset, two and a half days from now.”

Lucas, Edmon and Kik stood silent while Nemel sighed. “I have to hope one of you actually thinks this through this time, or we’re going to be in real trouble. I’ll get back to work on making the second part of the poison.”

Lucas was shaken from his paralysis. He walked over to a bed and sat down. “Alright, action time. Forget about the minor criminal, whatever his name was. We can worry about him and the sniping location after we figure out the poison.”

“Actually, Erstine’s sent us the details of where to take the shot from,” Ivan said, pulling a sheet of paper from the back. “He’s even got the house plans of the target building and our vantage point. Edmon, you’ll be shooting from atop a scaffold on a skyscraper nearby.”

“Then that leaves only the poison,” Lucas rubbed his chin. “Edmon, can you get one of the workers for his house drunk? You might get an opportunity or some knowledge that way.”

“I heard of the hosting noble while I was listening around town,” Ivan said while Edmon hastily nodded. “His name is Clement Rostell. It’s rumoured that he has deep interests in the local syndicates, legal and otherwise. No doubt our man Odell is sucking up to him for some reason or another. He’s a fairly well-known figure among the nobility and he keeps himself in the public eye. I heard he named a new academy building after himself the other week.”

Kik started to calm down as he realised that the two of them were seriously thinking things through. “Edmon, do you still have to go pick up the drone we used?”

“Yup. Uh, I’ll go do that now. Nemel, you’re still working. Ivan, Kik and Lucas… do you want to head over to the target’s house and take a look at the sniping spot? Let me know what you can see there.”

“I’ve got one or two things to take care of around here. I should have a read through our instructions myself, and I have to do the washing,” Lucas said. “Ivan and Kik, you can go.”

Ivan nodded. “As long as we can take the groundcar. It’s a fair trip to Rostell’s home.”

Lucas clapped his hands. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s move, everyone.”

Towards the southeast of their residence, on the side of the noble district closer to the large, block-spanning government buildings, there were a multitude of scenic parks and ponds. Scattered through the streets were a collection of metallic statues, ranging from soldiers to politicians frozen in oration to pieces that can be described only as ‘abstract’.

The home of the politician known as Clement Rostell lay within this area. A surprisingly magnificent three-story building in a city dominated by skyscrapers, it was as much a statement of his stubbornness as his taste that he lived in such a tiny estate when his land was obviously worth so much more.

Painted a muted yellow, compared to the white and grey reflective buildings around it it very much stood out. As for its shape, Victorian windows protruded in triples from its walls, forming mini balconies. The tiles were removed from half of the upper level and replaced by a greenhouse, housing hundreds of different plants. The small but still respectable grounds were well-maintained and security cameras vigilantly watched the surroundings.

On the two blocks to the south and southeast of the Rostell household lay a pair of skyscrapers, on the north and east quarters of the blocks respectively. The southeast one was slightly shorter. The eighteenth floor of the shorter skyscraper had recently been closed for renovations, although no work had started yet. On this floor, the scaffolding used to clean the windows had been left hanging next to an open window.

Peering his head through the window, Ivan looked across the street to the northwest.

“I can see the target’s house fully from this vantage,” he said. “We have an assurance that the meeting is in the greenhouse, so Edmon’s shot shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Meanwhile Kik was looking around the barren level. All of the furniture had been removed, leaving only the interior walls, a few support columns and the elevators. Kicking a few rocks across the floor, he turned to Ivan. “How do you reckon we’re going to get in there?”

“I’m about to cut a hole in the window. Once it’s time to get onto the scaffold…”

“I’m talking about the house across the street, not that.”

“Don’t interrupt me, please.” He blinked in thought. “Fine. Edmon will most likely be figuring that out soon. We have far too little time to find a path in on our own, so we need to get one from the inside. Edmon’s going to go looking for an employee of the Rostells who can hopefully provide us with a way in.”

“And how is he going to do that?”

“Edmon’s fairly good at that sort of thing.”

At that moment, Edmon was approaching the outflow of the water system, holding the metal case that stored the drone and its controller. Humming a meaningless tune, he strolled down a street with the box slung over his shoulder. Other people constantly walked past or beside him, but none gave him a second look.

The water system in the city pumped unused drinking water back into another tank to place back into circulation. The probe should be sitting in a pool of water buried beneath a nearby park. He needed to activate the drone and from then he could direct it towards the surface.

Finding an empty bench he sat down and pulled out the controller attachment and his datapad. The park was mostly quiet except for a few workers sealing up an access hatch to the space below. Whistling, he booted up the controller program and connected to the drone. His whistling stopped.

The drone wasn’t in range. Switching from the controller program to the map, he looked through it, confirming his location was where the drone should end up. He wasn’t wrong.

“Where are you,” he muttered to himself, scrolling through the map. There were a few waterways that the drone might have passed through, but they continued no more than a kilometre to the next tank. It should still be in range if it had gone through one of those.

A chill came across him and he looked around himself nervously. There was nobody paying any more attention to him than usual. Calming down slightly, he thought to himself about his options.

“I could keep walking towards the next tank on the off chance the signal is being blocked somehow. There’s a chance that the drone got sucked past that one too, or maybe there’s too much stuff between us. If it’s not that I’ll have to consider the drone lost, which would piss me off. What could have happened to it other than being carried too far by the pressure?”

Thinking back to what they had done with the drone, he considered the destruction that had been caused to get the probe through the pipes. “Could they be on to us…”

Looking up, he spotted the pair of workers closing up the plating. Checking his map, he realised they were right above where the water tank sat.

Standing up abruptly, he started walking away. He tossed the communicator attachment into a bin by the park, carrying only the case and his datapad with him.

He had passed three blocks before he was confident he hadn’t been followed.

Back at the room, everyone met up again to report their findings. Lucas was the only absentee. He was out refilling the car’s tank. Kik stood by the front windows, while Ivan and Edmon sat on their beds towards the rear of the room. Nemel was working by the wall as usual, but she turned one ear towards their conversation.

“It’s a shame we lost it,” Edmon said. “It was a Stanwright too. Their drones are top quality.”

“Are you sure that you aren’t just overreacting?” Kik asked him. “It’s your drone, not mine, but it would have been worth the risk if you had retrieved it.”

“IF I got the drone back. It had no connection at all, it can’t have been anywhere nearby.”

“Unless you just forgot to turn the power off when you were supposed to. It could have been out of fuel.”

“Impossible. The fuel cells last for a few days. Well, it could happen with the amount of time we used the laser for, but there would still be some power to the transmitter. I was getting no signal at all. Either it was out of range or the transmitter was manually turned off.”

“Edmon made the right decision,” Ivan said. “If he had continued on and something had happened, it would have gone badly for all of us. He was right to cut losses when he did.”

“That is, until they find the drone in the water system. Then they’ll know somebody was messing with something. They’re certain to find it too, since you’ve given up.” Kik didn’t ease the criticism.

Ivan winced but rebutted. “It would be more suspicious if the problem occurred and they found nothing. Then they’d know for sure it was planned. This way the problem could be mistaken for a prank or simple mistake and delay their questioning.”

Kik considered that for a second. “You may be right. Do you intend to go and claim the drone from whoever picked it up claiming that’s the case? Actually, you might get away with it with a bribe or two.”

“Either way, it’s a moot point,” Ivan said. “Edmon can’t visit the water companies, we don’t have enough time. We have to proceed to the next part of our plan.”

Kik nodded. “We checked out your spot, Edmon. It’s pretty nice, although it could get breezy, being on the eighteenth floor.”

Edmon thought about it. “Ain’t too bad. How far away is the target from the vantage point?”

Ivan spoke up. “Horizontally, 75 metres, give or take about ten metres. Vertically, you’re looking at a fifteen level height advantage.”

“That should be plenty close for me.”

“By the way,” Nemel called over to them, “Lucas read through the house plans and scanned them into a datapad file. He marked all the rooms too so you might want to take a look if you’re done.”

The target house had a ground floor, first and second story, as well as a basement and a wine cellar beneath that. Contrasting to its relatively small frontage, it was stretched back quite a way into its plot. The first level was living quarters, including dining rooms, living spaces and bathing facilities. The second level was the meeting chambers, long-distance communications rooms and the greenhouse.

The ground floor was a bit more interesting. It held an entryway, cloak room and doorman’s station, as well as guard quarters, a kitchen and facilities for the servants, including a game room and other relaxation areas. No living quarters were provided for the servants.

In the basement there was, of all things, a ballroom, accessible from the entryway. There was also a large pantry and food storage area, connecting the ballroom beside it, the kitchens above, and the wine cellar below. That was buried deep beneath the rest of the facilities, two stories or more below street level.

All the connections between floors were stairways, except for a small food elevator connecting the pantry, just outside the kitchen and the upper floors.

“Lucas estimated between ten and thirty staff will be in the building at all times of the day, on both a day and night shift,” Nemel said.

“Well this is a bitch of a job,” Edmon commented.

On the next day, Nemel finally stood up and stretched. “This bit is done,” she said to Kik, Lucas and Ivan. Edmon was out watching the facilities from his vantage point, trying to spot someone to get information from. “The sample is complete. It’s up to you to figure out what to do with it.”

“So how does this one work?” Kik asked. “Does he just need to drink a few drops this time?’

“Not really,” Nemel said. “The bacteria in here collects and produces fat molecules around the heart. It will basically cause cardiac arrest if enough gets there, the more the better. If this is diluted in a full bottle of wine, he should need to drink one and a half glasses of it and wait five minutes before the effects show themselves. Assume each glass beyond that will decrease the time by one minute. That’s particularly important for you, Edmon, since you need to time your shot to coincide with his heart attack. Oh, Edmon’s not here, right. I’ll tell him later.”

Edmon sneezed and shivered slightly as he watched the entrance to the target building. A light drizzle had set in late in the morning, ending their almost week of perfect weather. He had been forced to move from out on the scaffold to inside the furniture-free floor by the inclement weather. Unfortunately, he had already pulled out the circle of glass that Ivan had cut before to get onto the scaffolding, and a cold breeze spattered with raindrops blew in from the west.

He had sat there for a few hours already, with nothing but an already-finished rations pack and a light jacket to distract him from the cold. Now, finally, as the sun sank towards the horizon just over a day before the meeting, the targets of his observation were emerging: the workers on Clement Rostell’s estate.

As the night shift arrived, the day shift began to trickle out. Maids and guards, groundskeepers and servants, the trickle of people slowed after brief seconds, about twenty emerging. Looking through the crowd, Edmon couldn’t pick out any targets in particular.

Eventually he spotted a woman in the dark grey uniform of the security guards say goodbye to another woman in the same uniform, who drove off in the groundcar waiting to pick her up. The woman left behind was slightly chubby, with uniformly neck-length black hair. She was far from the most attractive woman he had seen, although it was a bit hard to tell from his distance.

The woman turned left and began walking off slowly with her hands in her pockets. She looked like the kind of person who wasn’t happy with their lot, and he hadn’t spotted any other likely candidates.

Descending the elevator, he followed her from the other side of the street, staying beneath the shelter of the awnings that had folded out above the paths once the rain started. After a few minutes, she stopped suddenly and looked around. Edmon made sure to be looking in the other direction. She then pulled on a red jacket and ducked into a store. Music blared for a second before she closed the door.

Walking up to the front, Edmon saw that it was a bar, the “Fair Chance”. He smiled to himself and walked inside.

He was greeted by a loud beat, some sort of synthesised board playing in repeated riffs. It sounded like something he was born fifteen years too early to appreciate. The bar was fairly full, but most of the clientele were focussed on one of the walls, which was actually a screen depicting a race between some four-legged reptilian creatures. They carried human passengers behind them atop a wheeled vehicle. The passengers spurred them on from with electric shocks from long whips. The inhabitants of the bar were casting bets all over the place, cheering, clapping and occasionally booing.

Other than the screen to the left, the rear wall of the had all the drinks laid out across it, with the bartender standing behind the counter. He wore an all-black suit and had skin dark as a desert tribesman, contrasting to the white wall behind him. The rest of the area was covered in tables, many knocked towards the right by the frenzied betters.

In the corner by the right of the counter sat the woman Edmon had come to find, facing towards the right wall. She already had a partially finished drink in front of her, with a second one lined up after it.

Edmon approached the counter and sat down on a stool near the woman’s table, knocking once on the counter to signal the bartender and pointing at the wall. He was well trained, as a mug of frothing liquid slid towards him across the counter almost as soon as he had ordered. He took a swig of the bitter stuff as he passed over his card to be scanned as payment for the night.

Ten minutes later, and the woman had just about finished her third glass. Edmon, taking it slowly, was not quite through with his first.

As she drained her third mug, she sighed. Sensing an opportunity, he swiveled his chair around. “You seem like you have something going on.”

She glanced at him, taking a moment to register that he was talking to her. “Don’t we all?”

“True enough. You seem like you have it worse than many though.”

“Oh? You want to take a guess?”

Edmon peered at her. “You work long hours and feel very little satisfaction from your job.”

“That’s hardly special.”

“I’m not done. You have a home but you don’t want to go there, not even long enough to change your clothes before going out. You’d prefer to come here and drink. You’re not afraid of the quiet at home, but the opposite. There’s someone you don’t want to meet there. Someone who hurts you, in body and mind, whenever you meet them.”

She stared back. “What makes you say that?”

“Makeup can hide bruises. It doesn’t remove them.”

She grabbed at her neck. “I got that at work today. It’s not what you think.”

“Tell yourself that all you want, but I think I can help get you out of your situation.”

She backed away. “I’m not interested in help. I can manage on my own.” She started heading towards the door.

“If you change your mind, I’ll be here for the next two hours,” he called to her retreating back. She paid him no notice.

The bartender came over to speak to Edmon. “Sir, if all you’re going to do is scare off our customers, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Don’t worry,” Edmon told him. “She’ll be back.” He drowned the rest of his glass. “Can I have another?”

Twenty minutes later and Edmon was rethinking his confidence. He had no guarantee that his guesses were right, and even if they were there was no guarantee that they would motivate the woman. He had gone through a total of three glasses of light beer as he worried about his prospects for the next day. If he didn’t convince anyone in the day shift, he would have to find someone from the night shift. It would mean staying up most of the night the day before an operation, and he would need to find someone with access to the wine cellar… there were too many factors. He would need to be incredibly lucky if they weren’t going to brute-force the preparations.

Somebody tapped his shoulder. Turning his head, the woman was standing behind him, embarrassed. “You said something about being able to help me?”

“Let’s sit down.” They found one of the many empty tables and sat opposite each other. Edmon focussed on the other party, who mostly kept her head down. After a few moments, he started the conversation. They talked in lowered voices, although they probably couldn’t be heard over the crowd and music anyway.

“What you need is a fresh start. I know someone who can get you off planet. We’ll send you to somewhere far away.”

“But all my family’s buried here. We’ve lived and died here for hundreds of years. I can’t just throw that away.”

“What your family would want is for you to be happy.”

“I can’t…”

“Keep your voice down. I don’t want to be overheard. Taking citizens offworld is usually illegal, right?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Then why are you helping me? You’re putting yourself at risk, aren’t you?”

“For money, of course. Why else?”

She leaned back in her chair, frowning but somehow more trusting. Everybody understood the pull of money, although the influence of alcohol might have something to do with it. “I don’t think I can make a choice for a while. It’s a big decision.”

“I get it. Is there anywhere we can talk more sometime? Obviously not your house, and I wouldn’t like to give away too much either.”

She looked around, thinking. “Back here?”

“No, that’s not a great idea. It was fine today because of all the noise, but if we meet in one place too often people will get suspicious. Especially since you’re married.”

She looked at the ring on the hand which she had just let go of her glass with. “That’s true. How about at my work? I can take visitors during my lunch break.”

Edmon laughed out loud inside. “That would work. If you want I can head over tomorrow, once I’ve spoken to a friend about how I could get you out. Where is it?”

She grinned and laid her head on the table. “Sure. Sure. It’s just five minutes east of here, the little yellow building. You can’t miss it. Come at midday tomorrow and I’ll greet you out the front.” She entered the meeting into her datapad. “Alright, I should get going now before the alcohol sets in. I never had a huge tolerance. See you tomorrow, uh…”

“Adrian. See you tomorrow.” He gave her his false identity for the planet.

“Sure. My name’s Cecilia.” He smiled at her back as she walked out.

Edmon yawned as he climbed in a taxi. “Busy day tomorrow. Need to get back and ask Lucas about those Honesty people, then I can get some sleep.” Even so, it took a lot of willpower to prevent himself from smiling from cheek to cheek in relief that he had actually secured a route into the building.

“Alright, remember, your name is Ossel, and mine is Adrian,” Edmon told Kik as they approached the building on midday of the final day. The two of them walked down the drying streets together, the rain having abated in the morning after a thunderstorm overnight. “It’s the false identity that Erstine provided you. If anyone asks who you are, say you’re my son, except to the woman we’re meeting you’re my nephew.”

Kik’s eyes almost rolled back in his head. “One thing at a time, please. Why are we doing any of this?”

“I’m meeting with a married woman at her workplace. It will be less suspicious if they see that I have a child too.” Edmon wiggled his hand, showing a silver band on his fourth finger. “We’ll try to find somewhere to talk, so you find your way into the cellar and get the bottle. Do you have your equipment?”

Kik nodded, pulling out a small case with a needle and some sealant inside. He also had the poison held tightly in one pocket, and his glasses sitting in another. “I’m ready. I’ve got the map on my glasses too. I should be able to navigate around the mansion without too much difficulty, especially if it’s the lunch break. So, for the trick of me being your nephew, the fact that she thinks she’s in on the lie makes her less likely to suspect something else going on?”

Edmon nodded. “That’s right.”

Arriving at the front gate just a few minutes short of midday, Edmon rang the bell. A screen popped up over the front gate, showing a person in the grey uniform of the estate security. His hair was greying and balding, and his face was wrinkled, but his eyes were sharp and scrutinous. “Hello, do you have an appointment?”

“I’m Adrian. We’re here to meet with a Cecilia?”

“Alright, I’ll let her know. If she’s expecting you she’ll be out in a minute or two.”

Shortly, Cecilia walked out the front door, pondering at first but then curious when she saw two people waiting for her. “Who is this?” she asked Edmon, pointing at Kik.

“This is my nephew, Ossel.” Kik shook her hand. “I brought him with me because I thought it would be inappropriate for you to meet an unmarried man during your lunch break. He’s pretending to be my son.”

Cecilia nodded. “I don’t know if he’ll pass as your son, but it doesn’t matter at this point. Here, take these.” She strapped a band to Kik’s and Edmon’s wrists, identical to one she herself was wearing. “Wear these and the guard dogs will leave you alone. They’ll attack you if you take them off on the grounds, though, so be careful.”

“I don’t see any guard dogs,” Kik said.

“They’re not kept where people can see them. Forget about that. Come in.”

Cecilia led the way to an interior, windowless room on the ground floor. She nodded to the doorman as they passed his station, the same elderly person that had spoken to them from the surveillance camera. The centre was dominated by a pool table and the inside was lit by strips of lighting on the ceiling. There were also a pair of computer terminals set into the wall. Kik remembered from the house map that this was the game room. It was currently empty.

Cecilia gestured Edmon to his chair. “Have a seat, uh… Adrian. We need to talk about the plans.”

Edmon sat down and leaned forwards. “Yes. I spoke to my friend who knows a bit about getting people off planet, and…”

“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t know what I was thinking last night. I was probably drunk. I’m perfectly happy with my lot here.”

“That’s not what you were saying last night.”

Before they could get any further into their conversation, two men in servants’ clothing walked in., chattering. The pair at the table looked over at them then back. “We should continue this elsewhere,” Cecilia whispered to Edmon, and the two of them began to walk out.

“Stay here for a few minutes, Ossell” Edmon said to Kik, holding up four fingers. Kik nodded. He had four minutes before they would be back.

The two men stared curiously at Kik as he sat there twiddling his thumbs. One of them broke the silence. “Hey, kid. Do you know who that person meeting with Cecilia was?”

“That was my uncle Adrian. Well, I’m supposed to say I’m his son. He says it’s better if people don’t realise that Miss Cecilia is meeting with an unmarried man at work.”

The two men glanced at each other and one of them winked. “Yeah, we understand. We won’t let anyone know.”

Kik smiled in gratitude. “That’s good. Do either of you know where the toilet is, by the way?”

“Yeah, it’s near the entrance to the kitchen, out that door there and to your right. Look for the big white door on the left before the end of the hall.”

The two started gossiping as soon as he was out of the room. He felt a bit sorry for the woman, but she would get over a little chatter. It was better for the men to think they had figured out what was going on than for them to speculate.

Thanking the men and walking through the door they pointed to, Kik hurried down the hallway, pulling on his glasses to quickly check the floor plans. He knew the closest bathroom was right before the stairs down to the pantry, just one level above the wine cellar.

Peering around the corner, there were a pair of men struggling to lift a giant hunk of meat half their size around the halfway corner of the stairwell. He couldn’t get down that way and time was ticking. Quickly stepping past the top of the stairs, he sniffed the air. The aroma of cooking food came from the door directly in front of him, as well as the sounds of many voices. It seemed like most of the staff were waiting for lunch.

On his left was his way down, a food elevator. It was around fifty centimetres wide by a metre tall, but it widened up sideways slightly once he was inside. Crouching down and squeezing his left side in first, he managed to wedge himself inside with no parts sticking out. Reaching out with his right hand, he pressed the button for the bottom floor.

The journey was slow, cramped and dark. Halfway down the carriage was lit up again by another opening to his right, showing him the empty pantry. It was walled in stone and covered by six-metre shelves groaning with food. There would be enough in this room to feed a district for a day.

Only a small portion of the food was actually open to the air, the rest was inside boxes and crates of nearly infinite variety. The only ones that were clear seemed to actually be cages for live animals of many different kinds, the largest cage taking up the space of an entire shelf. That one had opaque walls so Kik couldn’t see the insides.

He travelled past this bright area into darkness once again. When he emerged for the second time he was alone in the wine cellar.

The three-metre-high space was stacked floor-to-ceiling with wine bottles and casks. It was a place exclusively of wood and glass, with stone and metal used only in the walls and the pillars to hold up the ceiling. Dark liquid and Kik’s distorted reflection looked around him as he peered around. “Where are you, Colaron liquor…”

Wandering through to the back, he read the labels of the glasses as he passed them. He found many bottles of Colaron, the being a popular source of wine, but all of them were from far more recently, in the early ’800s. Walking back, the wine gradually got older and older, until he reached the mid ’700’s. After a few more steps, he found the rack of ’724 Colaron. There was quite a stash of them, despite having been made over a hundred years ago.

Pulling out the needle and the serum, he sucked up most of the contents of the test tube before piercing the cork and injecting the serum. Pulling out the needle, he sealed up the tiny hole with an unnoticeable dab of glue and breathed a sigh of relief.

A second later, the adrenaline wore off slightly and he realised the effects of what he had just done. His heartbeat accelerated. Clapping a hand over his mouth, he forced himself to breathe slowly and calm down, before focussing on the task at hand again.

So far, he had taken about two and a half minutes. Replacing the bottle sideways on the shelf with a shake to disperse the serum through it, he scampered back towards the entrance to the cellar.

The pantry was deserted, as were the stairs leading up to the kitchen layer above. Breathing out thanks to the warp for his good luck, he recalled the cargo elevator to this level and stepped into the toilet. Quickly relieving himself, he washed and dried his hands loudly and returned to the room he had left.

Cecilia and Edmon were waiting for him inside. “What were you doing, Ossel?” Edmon asked.

“I just had to go to the toilet. The workers who were over there told me the way.” Kik pointed to where the two men had been sitting, but they weren’t in the room any longer.

Edmon shrugged. “Alright. We’re done with our talk.” He scowled slightly.

Cecilia nodded. “I’ll see you out.” She walked them to the front gate, taking their wristbands and sending them off.

Kik rested his hands behind his head.

“That went well,” he said. “We’re finally set up for the main event.”

From the second floor of the house, a pair of men watched their departure. One was seated by the window, the curtains drawn back just enough to give a glimpse of his angular, hawk-like face and dark, straight hair, parted at the centre. The other stood beside his chair, looking through the window down at the road.

“So which one of the rats was doing the sneaking, Ferris?” the seated man asked.

“The small one, sir. He managed to squeeze into the dumbwaiter and gain access to the wine cellar.”

“Did you catch what he did on camera?”

“Hardly, sir. You told us not to place cameras down there, saying it would, I quote, ‘ruin the air flow’.”

“I may have at one point. Put the word out to watch for the two of them and discretely speak to a few of the staff. I want to know what they’re trying to do in my house without my permission. Also, sweep the wine cellar for listening devices and make sure every bottle is tested before it is poured.”

“As you wish, Sir Rostell.”

Back at the house, everyone was waiting, Lucas pacing around the room and Ivan and Nemel were messing with their datapads. Kik skipped in, grinning. “I did it. Nobody saw me.”

Edmon followed behind more sedately. “Mission complete.”

Lucas sighed in relief. “That’s a load off our shoulders. Alright, we’ll proceed as normal. Does anyone have anything to mention?”

Ivan nodded. “Benedict never showed up at the council chambers today. He sent a message in and confirmed that he was just busy, but it’s strange that he would miss out on a discussion of home privacy when it’s one of the issues that he’s most passionate about.”

“What do you mean?” Lucas asked.

“Well, his most basic political slogan is ‘privacy is a right’. Today’s debate focusses around increased security measures, giving police the ability to raid any house with minimal evidence. Since he’s missing, his compatriots are having a hard time.”

He passed around his datapad, which was currently displaying local news. Two lines of men in white bathrobes were standing out of their cushioned seats in a formal room, shouting at each other. The caption read, “New goals for the security party”.

“None of his side can make any headway. He’s losing much-needed votes because the opposition is swaying many of the neutral councilmen.”

He held up the datapad again, just as the news story changed from the debate to a picture of a line of policemen in armor with shields clashing with an angry mob. The caption read, “Riots continue in the industrial district”.

“Oh, the story’s over. Either way, you get the point. Something strange is going on here.”

Lucas nodded. “Anyone else have anything they want taken into account? No? Alright. Everybody, get ready to move out. We’re in your hands, Edmon. Bring everything with you, because there’s a high chance we won’t be coming back here.”

Packing all his various pieces of gear into his pockets, Kik considered what they were about to do. Sure, his part was already over, but he had arguably played the biggest part of all. He hadn’t made the poison, nor had he forced the man to drink it, but he was the one who had put it there. If the killing instrument was a gun, he would have been the one to pull the trigger.

Although if he didn’t pull the trigger, his mother could lose everything. Was the one to blame really him, or Erstine sitting smugly back on Lanos, not knowing whether the bullet had been fired or not?

Realising he had stopped moving, he jumped back into motion and soon everyone was ready for the final groundcar ride.

After a few hours of eternal torment, Kik felt ready to explode, the same as everybody else. Before he ran down the stairs and started screaming at pedestrians outside, Lucas checked the window and gave them the all-clear. “Sunset. Let’s move.”

The car trip was quiet and awkward. Ivan drove, and Lucas, Kik, Edmon and Nemel sat in the back. Even Edmon wasn’t able to crack a smile from being seated next to Nemel. All of them were carrying several bags, with a few extra lying in the middle of the floor.

When they were a few blocks away, Ivan opened the slot to the front seat and spoke through it. “We’re almost there. Lucas and Edmon, I’ll drop you two nearby, then I’ll circle around and park a block to the east. We’ll be waiting for your message, so let us know when and where you need extraction.”

Edmon nodded, shouldering the bag of boxes Lucas had taken from Belwin and dropping the other. Lucas did the same, keeping the metal case which he had received from Belwin. He took a small-calibre pistol out of it and handed it to Nemel. “Just in case.” The rest of the case was filled with flat plates of varying sizes, as far as Kik could see before it was closed again.

Edmon was dropped off on the outside of the skyscraper with Lucas. Making his way inside as quickly as possible, he headed back out to the eighteenth floor. Stepping out onto the scaffold carefully, he looked around at the already fully dark sky. Fliers zipped around and the flow of people below slowly trickled off, the rhythm of the city continuing as normal. Calmed by the sensation, he pulled out binoculars and a dark, non-reflective cloak from his bag. He started to piece together his high-powered crossbow as he memorised his target’s face from the datapad. At least today it wasn’t raining.

Lucas walked the whole way along the block, completely passing the target’s house and entering the alley to its southwest, across the road and at the opposite end of the block. He kept the hood of his jacket low over his face and watched the floor. Stopping by the wall, he opened up the case he was carrying.

Looking inside, hidden by the lid of the case, he inspected an assault rifle, ensuring it was assembled and loaded. Just in case they needed a distraction. Putting it away, he closed the case again, ignoring the rest of its contents for now.

Ivan lay back in the driver’s seat of the car and rested his cap over his eyes, although he was alert as ever. From the backseat, Kik and Nemel took turns watching the front of the Rostell household. Everybody was set up, and all that was left was to wait the ten minutes it would take for the guests to begin to arrive.