The Stranger on the Corner
At the corner of Emporia and Glassway, Mira spotted him. A man leaned nonchalantly against the reflective wall of a café, his dark glasses and slim tactile gloves immediately marking him as an agent. In her line of work, she called them “Investment Scanners,” the people who knew how to profile, evaluate, and prosecute with the unemotional precision of artificial intelligence. Yet, something about this man set her on edge.
His fingers moved subtly over the surface of his gloved palms, as if coding something that only he could see. The glaze of rain-coated light on his glasses made it impossible to tell where his gaze rested. Mira breathed through her tension. She had rehearsed this moment countless times in her mind, but theory and action had always been separated by instinct.
The stranger tilted his head slightly toward her as though he could hear her thoughts. Then he smiled—a small, menacing grin that exposed canines just faint enough to suggest he wasn’t entirely human anymore. “Ms. Evenson,” he drawled, his voice a honeyed blend of human and machine. “Or do you prefer ‘the Cleaner’?”
Choices and Betrayals
“I don’t know who you think I am,” Mira replied, her tone measured and flat. A deflection that felt like throwing rocks at a bulletproof glass wall. The tech-cleanser in her bag sat heavy on her shoulder, each step forward urging her body between fight or flight. She couldn’t lead him to the drop zone. And she couldn’t run. Not yet.
The man stepped away from the café’s wall with an unsettling elegance. “You don’t need to explain yourself. Everyone makes choices, Mira. But choices have consequences.”
That word stung: choices. It reminded her of what the Resistance had asked—the morality of burning memory banks that stored decades of digital humanity. It reminded her of him, the partner she had once trusted, the one who sold out their cause. Her pulse spiked, the emotional cocktail of fury and heartbreak rippling under the surface of her composed walk.
A trio of mechanized drones descended behind her, their lights scanning her body like relentless searchlights.
The Final Gambit
Mira spotted a spill of spilled drones crossing a crowded pedestrian square. In her head, she calculated: an escape route, obfuscation tactics, and ways she could distract the stranger long enough avoid.
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