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.Dread smiled at the sisters’ little joke.A light was blinking on the only object of modern furniture in the room, a huge sleek desk.Hesat down, quickly found the retracting panel that contained the connection hardware, andplugged himself in.The room stayed in place, but the Beinha sisters abruptly appeared on the far side of the table,side by side, their sims as featureless as two parcels wrapped in brown paper.For a brief momentDread was startled, until he realized that he was in a simulation which duplicated the room evenmore exactly than the room mirrored his own online office.“Very nice,” he said.“Thank you for preparing this welcome.”“Some people find their environment crucial to their ability to work,” said one of the Beinhas,her tone implying that neither she nor her sister were such people.“Our program is ambitious.You will need to be at your best.”“We await the second third of our payment,” said the other lumpy shape.“You received the coded list?”Both sisters nodded in synchrony.“Then I’ll download one of the two keys now.” He felt around on the unfamiliar desk for thetouchscreen, then opened the account the Old Man had created and dispatched the sisters one ofthe pair of encryption keys necessary to access the list.“You’ll get the other when the operationlaunches, as we agreed.”When the Beinhas – or their expert system – had examined the goods, they nodded again, thistime indicating satisfaction.“We have much work to do,” one of them said.“I’ve got time now, although I have something I really must do before too late tonight.Tomorrow I’m all yours.”There was a moment of silence from the twin shapes, as though they were considering this as aliteral possibility.“To begin with,” said one, “the target has changed security companies since we last briefed you.The new company has come in and altered several aspects of the compound’s defenses, not all ofwhich we have discovered.We know little about the new company, whereas we had severalinformants at the previous firm.”“Which may be why they’ve changed their security people.” Dread called up the report.Theinformation hung in the air before him.He began to bring up the rest of his array, charts, lists,topographical maps, blueprints.Color-coded and gleaming, they turned the virtual office into aneon fairyland.“How does this change of security affect your program?”“It means more danger to you and the rest of the ground team, of course,” said one of the sistershapes.“And it means we will undoubtedly have to kill more people than we planned.”“Ah.” He smiled.“What a shame.”Even a cursory discussion of the new twists in the operation took several hours.When he hadterminated the contact and left his new office, he was feeling stretched thin by work and theflight in.He walked back along the waterfront, letting the soothing sound of the ocean wash overhim.As he passed large and imposing office buildings, a small formation of camera-drones,activated by motion or his body heat, came swarming out.They overflew him once, thenretreated to the shadows, scanning him all the while.Tired and irritated, he resisted the impulseto lash out at this surveillance, to damage or confuse them.It would be a waste of time, as wellas foolish.They were only doing their job, monitoring someone who was close to their buildingafter hours; the pictures would be viewed briefly in the morning by a bored guard, then theinformation would be erased.As long as he didn’t do anything rash, that was.Confident, cocky, lazy, dead, he reminded himself, walking on without a backward glance.TheOld Man would be proud of him.He walked into his room and undressed, then hung his suit in the closet.He examined his nakedform in the mirror for a few moments, then sat on the bed and turned on the wallscreen.Hebrought up his own inner music, a burst of deep-sonic mono loco dance dirge, in honor of hisvisit to Colombia.He found something on the wallscreen with abstract but fast-changing visuals,and turned up the sound in his head until he could feel the bass pulsing in his jawbone.Hewatched the images flicker by for a few moments, then checked himself in the mirror again.There was something predatory in his long, muscled limbs, in the flatness of his own expression,that excited him.He’d seen that face before.He’d seen that movie.He knew what was going tohappen now.As he walked to the bathroom, he threw a few dissonant horn-blasts into the music, sharp edgesof sound that suggested mounting tension.He brought the volume down as he opened the door.Camera zooms in
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