The Condominium (REBOOT / IC)

[Sylvanstreak]

recreated by cylarn, erucia, mincaldenteans, and zarkanians
lorekept and secretaried by sylvanstreak

January, 2020
Trouble never failed to start with a woman.

Unlike all the stories, though, this particular woman wasn’t a redhead with legs up to...wherever. Not at all. Don’t get me wrong, she was nearly as tall as me. But the way she looked around curiously at everything, now that screamed, off-island. Even my nameplate on the dashboard, with my photo large on the left. Then my taxi ID number under it, the taxi hotline under that, and my name on the right. PRISCA SIMON, all in fading black letters.

I still don’t know why I did it. Oma en Opa would have smacked me in the face with paintbrush handles and then given me a lecture each. On a good day. The trip from the airport to the cluster of nightclubs on Bird of Paradise Terrace over in Whitaker sure didn’t give me any reason to, either. Only thing out of the ordinary was her asking to turn the radio up. Turned out, she had the same taste in music as me. Just one of us would be taking the A train, though, sure wasn’t going to be me.

Surviving was good enough.

I’d adjusted my ballcap a bit as she swiped her card and left my cab in a flurry of long, wavy blonde hair. Bird of Paradise Terrace had the most distinct street layout in all of Condominium, sitting atop a hill as it did. So the shallow curve bulged up vertically in the middle, right? Going all three-D. Most people liked to start the night at one end and finish on the other. All of which meant it was one of the safest places in all of Condominium, too, ‘cause someone would have to run straight up or down a steep hill to get out of there after doing any messy business. Criminals were a lazy lot, even here.

And somehow, someone still managed to do it.

I let the docs know her name was Carol Saint James, a few someones in ski masks had plugged her six or seven times, and she was with Phoenix. Yeah, the nightclub with the tacky theme name to match the street it was on. Either she was working there, or about to, or they were about to work for her. Either way, she was the ER’s business now. Mine? Cleaning her blood off my seats and clothes.

Hydrogen peroxide. Never leave home without at least 3 bottles.

*****

Word spread fast enough about an offlander getting popped in one of the safest places in the middle of the safest island. To all the right ears, that is. Not so much as a peep was heard by the partygoers and revelers.

The gangs didn’t care much, it wasn’t their business anyhow. But for a select few, more in the know? Carol Saint James had been a major opportunity for the drug ring working out of the Phoenix to change their line of work into something less risky and less attention-getting: pirated music.

Scratch less attention-getting, because she was - had been also the agent for an up and coming surf rock band. They’d been setting up a gimmick deal, tour of a bunch of islands via cruise ship. A lot of offlanders were about to wake up to a lot of red ink in their bank records. And once that happened...

*****

The gentle thudding of the tires connecting with the runway bounced through the plane. There were worse landings, all things considered.

Only three seats were filled this time around. The sunlight shining through the windows heated up the fine-grained leather, but it was short-lived as the pilot swung the smallish business jet into the hangar. The whine of the engines deepened and then quieted completely.

Down below, the usual BMW sedan waited. Characteristic of Lichter, no markings, discreet. Nothing to indicate it was armored up to anything except a tank shell, or the rack of Swiss-made SIG automatic rifles deep in the trunk, right behind the fold-down rear seats.

*****

...there was no telling what kind of mayhem was coming.

Phones rang across the Condominium, from Whitaker Grand Casino & Hotel to Embassy Row. The Phoenix Circle was on the hunt, that was for sure.

But the Lichter Solutions team wasn’t on anyone’s radar, yet.

[The United Federation of Terrans]

January, 2020
Operator Erik Bauer

Erik had to admit that Lichter had some swanky digs when they pulled out all the stops. Most of his deployments with Lichter usually involved taking a surplus cargo aircraft, or a dusty Jeep, or a slow river ride on a shot up Zodiac; or a combination of the three if Erik's luck was extremely low. So the rich, leather seats that he seemed to sink into and the cool, climate controlled temperature made this deployment one of the best so far. That was before he included the company of course.

His wife sat in the seat across from, back to the cockpit, as she went over a report for the fifth time. In her off-hand she scribbled notes and thoughts on a notepad that Erik knew she would have to organize into a coherent plan/spreadsheet/et cetera before she even thought about sleeping. That meant another late night with the lights blazing away and incessant typing until she most likely collapsed at her workplace. It was an annoying but he wouldn't give her up for a second.

Erik knew he was still lovestruck. Alicia still looked the same as the day they met in Venezuela. Reddish hair pulled into a braid and pulled through the back of a Yankees' cap. Sprays of freckles that dotted her pale face and made her brown eyes appear lighter. She was even wearing the same worn hiking boots from that day; green cargos and a dark shirt that ended mid-forearm completed her outfit. He wondered how he could-

The lurch of his stomach and the sudden tilting sensation told Erik that the plane had begun its final descent. He had apparently tuned out the pilot in his admiring. The pang of annoyance turned to frustration as he averted looking at his wife. Over a decade of combat and mercenary work and he loses his awareness on one mission with his wife. It didn't say good things about the future of this little endeavor. The frustration brought up another question that he had remained forgotten in his excitement to see his wife.

'How could he do his job if he knew Alicia would be a step behind him?'

He mulled over that question in silence all the way until the plane hit the tarmac.

-----
Investigator Alicia O'Donnel-Bauer

The plane had landed and the door was down.

Alicia tucked the last crime scene report away into its respective folder and stowed it in its respective binder; before placing the binder in one of her two packs. One was dedicated to her reports and paperwork; the other to her clothes and travel kit. They were both the same off the rack travel packs she had purchased in a hurry on the way out of New York. Bland and indistinguishable still after years of constant use. Alicia only needed those two bags, no matter the job, something she teased Erik about incessantly.

Erik was at the plane's rear extracting his heavily loaded bags from the storage locker; two backpacks and a heavy duffel. The duffel contained all of Erik's gear "Except the guns" as he put it when he checked it over last night. One of the packs were his civilian clothes and the other was a smaller thing Erik called his "Bush Pack". She didn't pretend to understand her husband's methods or his line of thinking. After all she had told him to dress low key.

Instead he had shown up in tan Crye fatigue bottoms, a black combat top and tan combat boots bloused jungle style. His SIG P226 sat in a thigh holster, in plain view, unlike her Glock that sat inside her waistband and concealed by her shirt. Then there was also that damn beard. When Erik left for a four month tour of the Triple Frontier, he had been clean shaven. Now he had four months of growth he insisted made him look "badass". That was before accounting for whatever gear he was going to throw on so he could be prepared.

Needless to say, he looked and, probably, sounded like the spokesman for mercenaries everywhere. Which was to say the discreet nature she was told to maintain was going to go out the window, unless she could reign her husband in. The mechanics of that eluded her however as she disembarked the plane with her husband in tow; his duffel's contents shifting with each step.

Perhaps the other operator would be more discreet.

[Trenaka]

John would carefully take out his preferred weapon, a sniper rifle, and aimed it, placing the crosshairs over the victim’s heart. He twitched his finger, and a shot rang out into the street below. A spray of blood emanated from the man’s chest, and he fell to the sidewalk, dead. Pedestrians around the man would scream, and the street would transform into a scene of chaos. John got up from his position on the roof, and walked down the access stairs. It had been extremely easy to pick the locks on this building, abandoned for years on Fairway Island. He exited the building from the back, listening as the sirens of emergency vehicles grew louder in the street. He eventually found his way to a ferry dock, where he entered a ferry to the Clovis Marches, and headed home.

When he arrived at his home, he locked his weapons back in the gun safe, and went to his computer. He began to type up an email to his client. When he finished, he went into his living room, where he got a message from his gang friend Tom.

Seems like some exec got killed before making a Triad deal. Things may get a little more interesting.

Anyone investigating?

Just the syndicates so far, I think. Lichter might get involved, though, from what I’ve heard. Some pressure might be on your killings. Lichter might see them as connected with the exec killing.

Good thing I got you to tell the other gangs it wasn’t me.

Yeah.

He would hear a small beep from his computer, and would walk over to it, opening a reply from his client.

Good job. The rest of the money will be sent to the account within the next week.

He would then hop onto the .onion browser page, putting in a url for an online hitman shop. He looked through the listing for his area like someone would browse for houses, checking prices and location.He eventually found a good job with good money. A man by the name of Leon Howard, a manager at an accounting firm. He took another ferry to Fairway Island, and began to scope out the area of his target’s workplace.

[Forest State]

Shufen Hsu: The Exile
Fairway Island
January, 2020

It was with a gasp that Shufen awoke - she was pulled out of a dream, one where she had been engaged in a fight to the death… The details were hazy. They usually were, with these kinds of dreams that were happening at an odd time, not exactly when she would usually find herself asleep. Throwing off the timing of things seemed to throw off the content of the dream also, or at the very least, it affected what she remembered of it. Normally, it wasn’t a vivid experience for her. But she could remember some things clearly enough. The weight of the gun in her hand, bullets ricocheting around her, raising it at the person in front of her and firing.

Because it was a dream, her perception of time had been a little different from normal. She remembered seeing, well, everything. A brief explosion of light in front of the pistol as the muzzle flashed, the casing being discarded, and the projectile cutting through the air as it flew to the target. Of course, this was something she had seen in real life before, albeit sped up as it had happened in real time. But shooting someone? She’d been there and done that, when things had gotten bad. The incident that had forced her here, to this place. It was probably the reason it came up again in her dreams, though this was far from a flashback.

Back in the lab…

It was as if the dream was saying trouble was going to follow her even if she was somewhere else.

She didn’t know what happened after she fired the shot - that was when she had been woken up, and she shifted her attention to her current surroundings as her vision came into focus and she saw what was in front of her. She realized she was in the back of the place where she worked, the one called Meyer’s Computer Repair. Founded by someone with Dutch connections from the old days, from a family that had a history of running businesses on these islands. But Meyer didn’t want to do the active repair work these days, and Shufen found herself with a job handling it.

Her spot in the back wasn’t the largest, and it seemed far smaller when accounting for everything that was stacked around her and bearing down on her, mainly in the form of shelves filled with parts around her desk and a particularly large fan above her. But it was decent enough for what she needed to do. On that desk in front of her, where she had fallen asleep, her own laptop was currently resting open, in sleep mode.

Oh. She had probably gotten all her work done and opened up her own computer, but had fallen asleep at that point. As she touched the trackpad, the bright colors of her wallpaper appeared in her face. It was an anime wallpaper, displaying a cast of the ‘virtual YouTubers’ that were all the rage these days, but the kind of business she often handled on this laptop was far from as bright and cheery as the subject matter of her wallpaper.

She navigated to her encrypted chatting application, and opened it up to see what she had missed since she’d last put away her own laptop to work on the others that had been brought into the shop. She didn’t expect to see anything too significant… But this was the place where she received most of the updates she got about the scene that she was involved in here. Not scene as in the emo kind, but scene as in the criminal scene. Or, what she was trying to get into once again after everything fell apart back home.

Chatroom: Get Rich Or Die Trying
Logged in as <exile>

---

<agent47> - check this out
<agent47> - this little mod turns your regular handgun full auto
<agent47> - [10.5 MB video]
<agent47> - someone at the harbor is selling
<shiesty7677> - this post glows in the dark
<agent47> - true
<agent47> - but its the condos
<agent47> - who’s going to catch you
<x> - might cop
<exile> - just woke tf up in my workshop, blacked out longer than i thought
<exile> - what did i miss
<shiesty7677> - someone got murked
<shiesty7677> - that’s not from around here
<exile> - tf?
<shiesty7677> - streets said some exec was making a deal with your types
<shiesty7677> - and got murked before she could
<exile> - my types?
<exile> - like computer people?
<shiesty7677> - triads
<agent47> - we were hoping you could get more info
<exile> - i was never with a triad
<exile> - but i know a bit about them
<exile> - but why is this in the news
<exile> - people die here all the time
<shiesty7677> - not from off island
<shiesty7677> - and she had some importance
<shiesty7677> - i guess she was a moneymaker for some people
<shiesty7677> - and this deal was supposed to be worth a lot
<exile> - you saying we should lay low cause the streets are hot?
<agent47> - don’t know
<agent47> - but the triad might be looking into it
<agent47> - maybe u should too
<agent47> - see if there’s money to be made
<agent47> - or favors to help you get back your btc
<exile> - dont remind me
<exile> - i’ll think about it
<exile> - i’m going looking for something to eat
<exile> - in the meantime post this rat
<exile> - [1 MB image]

With that, Shufen closed the application and closed up her laptop, getting up and heading for the doorway of the workshop. She intended to get something to eat and perhaps stop by her apartment, but she now had something else on her mind in top of those other tasks… Figuring out what was happening at the moment that seemed to have the streets talking. And whether there was something for her in all of this, or if it was the kind of thing it was better to stay out of.

[Sylvanstreak]

The Fairway ferry terminal was sprawling, the largest in the island chain. Not surprising, since all Fairway did was handle marine traffic. It was also one of the only buildings outside the business district to still have all its anti-glare windows and working A/C.

The other one, wider and lower to the ground, was Teak Grove Trauma Center, halfway between it and downtown. Given its size and shape, and name, the mishmash of accents used in the Condo had quickly morphed the conversational short-hand “Tic Tac” for it. As Teak Grove stood between the early afternoon sun and his target’s office, Blackmore had no chance not to see the surgery intake crew rushing to get Carol Saint James off the medevac helicopter and into the OR, nor the two scowling, wiry Triadsters sauntering behind the gaggle of doctors and nurses. Prisca had jumped the gun in writing the executive off; not surprising, given her circumstances.

The taxi she drove sat abandoned in the Condo’s airport parking structure back on Whitaker; she herself had gone the other direction, following Saint James without knowing it. Max and Marit Simon had given her a name to seek out if she ever found herself in trouble she couldn’t solve herself, and didn’t want to go back to the old world for help. Carl Meyer, of Meyer’s Computer Repair.

[The United Federation of Terrans]

Operator Erik Bauer
Teak Grove Trauma Center

Erik had only heard stories about New York drivers so he had no idea where his wife stood in comparison. But he could definitely say that she would give Formula One drivers a run for their money. He wasn't proud to say that his legs shook slightly as he exited the up-armored sedan that Alicia had still managed to make jump into the air more then once. Alicia, for her part, seemed non-plussed and simply flipped her braid off her shoulder; while subtly adjusting the Glock hidden under her shirt. Though there was an odd glint in her eyes that told him this may have been payback.

Before they had left the hangar, he had donned the mottled tan plate carrier stowed in his duffle, and preceded to arm himself with the sedan's array of rifles. The SIG MCX was a favorite of Lichter and one Erik had come to enjoy over the typical HK platforms other companies bought in bulk. Erik had selected a regular sized MCX, with a sturdy collapsible stock, angled foregrip and a dependable Aimpoint sight with magnifier. It had served Erik well in the past and he found this set-up to be the most adaptable configuration out of the options Lichter had provided. Of course, it also meant subtlety was off, something his wife had argued for and failed.

Erik had seen enough this places to know that they would be tagged as "outsiders" as soon as they opened their mouths. He didn't look like a tourist at all and Alicia would get by for maybe a day or too before word spread about her. Of course, she hadn't seen that point at all and that lead to what Erik was suspecting was a mild case of whiplash.

In any case they were here now. A surprisingly new hospital that was many degrees better then what Erik was use to. Erik was readjusting the sling on his rifle when Alicia spoke up.

'Wait in the car honey. We don't want to scare the locals." The sarcasm on the term of endearment was apparent and Erik's protest was rising in his throat when she beat him to the chase. "I'll call if I need you to shoot up a hospital wing, okay?"

With that she sauntered off, a purposeful stride that she shifted purposefully into the wandering gait of a tourist. Erik stood outside the car, debating on his options, before scowling to himself and falling back into the car. He closed the door with a slam and leaned back with the rifle cradled awkwardly in his arms within the confines of the sedan. For all of his thoughts of the pointlessness of subtlety, here he was now, letting his wife walk alone into an unknown hospital that could be filled with trigger happy gangs.

The alternative though was an even more pissed off wife. The fact he sat in the car was a testament to which one he was more scared of at the moment.

Investigator Alicia O'Donnel-Bauer

The nurse's accent reminded Alicia of Erik's, a jaunty accent that seemed jovial and energetic no matter the topic, that's where the similarities ended. She could barely make out every third word and that took a level of effort she didn't need for a few simple questions.

"When will she be out?" Alicia was assaulted with another wave of barely incomprehensible speech that she eventually came to translate as 'I don't know'[/]. She felt the frustration mounting as she fished out a small notepad and scribbled her Lichter phone number on it before passing it to the duty nurse. "Call me when she wakes up."

"Ya go' it." She made that one out clearly at least. So she turned to leave when a thought struck her and she turned back to the nurse.

"Who brought her in?" The nurse seemed to ponder that thought before she turned her attention to her computer and stabbed a few keys. Then she scribbled a name down on a piece of paper and passed it over the paper laden desk. The nurse rattled off more of her flavored dialogue that Alicia took to mean that was all they got. Then the nurse went back to whatever she was working on and left Alicia to her own devices. [i]Prisca Simon TAXI, the paper read in the scrawl common to medical practices the world over, Alicia had a name now. Something to do besides sit around and wait for the victim to wake from consciousness. She was on the clock now and the only lead was a single name with nothing else accompanying.

Better then starting blind she guessed.

--------

Erik looked disgruntled as she slid back into the driver's seat and twisted to rummage through the bags in the backseat.

"Where to now love?" She could hear the annoyance in his voice as she pulling out the Lichter Tac-Pad. Basically, a hard shelled tablet connected to Lichter's private networks; it allowed her to access a fair amount of databases while on the go. The security measures involved a fingerprint with a pulse, eye scans and a sixteen digit passcode; fail one and the tablet would incinerate itself with the help of a minuscule thermite charge.

"Someone dropped her off, a Taxi driver named Prisca Simon, didn't stick around though." She entered the name into the tablet's search function and sat waiting. "A good Samaritan would have waited around. She probably knows more about this whole thing."

She didn't miss the scoff from her husband as he shifted and readjusted his grip on his rifle. "Rule one about crime scenes; get out while you can. Just took her longer to remember the rule is all."

"So your theory is she drove the victim to the hospital, realized she was in over her head, and decided to flee underground? That she's an innocent who doesn't want to help us catch the real criminals?" The incredulous tone was hard to keep out of her voice as the tablet finished its search and a list of names and pictures paraded across her screen. She turned her attention to trying to find a taxi driver among the list as Erik watched a gaggle of locals walk by dressed in football jerseys and clutching bottles.

"It is." The finality in his voice said that was the conversation's end. So she turned her attention back to the various profiles. Leaving the car in an uneasy silence.

[Forest State]

Carl Meyer
Fairway Island

There was indeed perhaps one man that flew under the radar as someone that would be useful among all this intrigue going on around the islands right now - Carl Meyer, the owner of Meyer’s Computer Repair, but more importantly someone that had a few connections and access to the pulse of the streets. Or, at the very least, Meyer knew some of the right people to talk to when someone needed to get a feeling for what was happening on the ground.

That wasn’t to say that Meyer himself was “with the streets” so to speak, because it was actually far from that - historically, his family had owned businesses around these islands dating back to the Dutch times. But Meyer was perhaps less refined than some of his other relatives as indicated by the just average exterior of the computer repair store, which was a far cry from the more professional import and export businesses that some of his other relatives had been known for. The place wasn’t huge, nor was it the nicest, but you could say that the one who owned it was a bit of a dark horse compared to relatives who had pushed for something… Better than this.

“Get into the import and export business,” they had said. They had said that running a computer repair store wasn’t something that one would be able to comfortably retire off of, that it wasn’t as big a business and that there was no point starting one on this island because it would fall victim to crime and it wasn’t the kind of place one should want to stay.

All that advice had been disregarded from the looks of things, and Meyer was the closest one in the family to the ground level of things - to what happened on the streets, because, well, the people that frequented this place and the people from around it were there. That included the relatively new technician who worked in the back, Shufen Hsu, who was involved more directly with the criminal side of things and sometimes even brought in clients that were looking for someone they could trust who was familiar with that kind of scene.

The last thing someone wanted, after all, was to find the feds on their ass because of something that had been found on their computer - and with cybercrime growing in the digital age, there were plenty of people who had such concerns.

At present, Meyer was actually at the business - that didn’t happen every day. For the most part, the man was one that preferred to delegate the tasks and spend more time on the beaches or in the clubs, but anyone looking to get in touch would be lucky today as within the medium sized lobby where there were computer parts on sale on either side of the room, a desk at the far end of it, where the man himself was sitting behind for the moment.

Sometimes, someone had to run something themselves to have it run right - or at least hang around the place and make sure everything was on the up and up.

[Bolslania]

Lucas O'Shiel, Clovis Marches, 5 PM

O'Shiel sat in a plush chair, in front of him sat a large mahogany desk. In the desk were files, records of transactions, and a Colt 2011. In front of the desk sat Antoni O'Cahan and Logan MacKiernan, two of his lieutenants. Each man had a glass of Brandy in their hands, waiting for a messenger to arrive from the docks. They had been chatting pleasantly for the past 45 minutes. O'Shiel wasn't a very intimidating man most of the time, so his lieutenants were relaxed as they talked and joked. The night lights of Whitaker Island even reached over here, the city being clearly visible to those on Clovis Marches. A car pulled in front of the building, and the three watched as a man ran in. A few minutes later, a knock on the door.

"Come in!" O'Shiel said, a man opened the door, it was one of the group leaders. O'Shiel had organized his mob very decentralized, with his power branching to lieutenants, whose power branched down to various "group leaders" or "Sergeants" and then to the grunts.

"The delivery has arrived sir, initial inspection indicates that it is all here." He said, O'Shiel nodded. He had ordered a batch of a variety of assault rifles, mainly Kalashnikov or Armalite pattern, pistols, shotguns, and rifles for sale on the Condominium. The lack of law enforcement meant that he could store the weapons in a ware-house, which made things oh so much easier.

"Good, get it into the warehouse, we'll do a full inventory there. Make sure that ship doesn't leave before we make sure they delivered everything though." The group leader nodded.

"Yes sir, my boys will take care of it."

"Good." O'Shiel took another sip of brandy, letting it roll on his tongue as the man left. His operation armed many of the gangs on the islands, save the super big ones on Whitaker Island, but he had sent scouts to feel the water for an entry into that market. Right now, the low-level gangbangers on Fairway, Clovis Marches and Khonar would have to due for now.

[Sylvanstreak]

Fairway Island
Meyer's Computer Repair

Prisca sat, half-squatting, on a brick rectangular planter outside the strip mall. An uncomfortable feeling had developed in the pit of her stomach, one she hadn't had to listen to in a long time, but she knew better than to ignore it. From under her baseball cap, she took another sip from the coffee cup, both hands wrapped around it.

No one in the area seemed to notice her, everyone keeping mainly to themselves as much as possible. All turning out as well as she hoped, then. She didn't know how this Carl Meyer would react to her grandparents calling in their last marker from beyond the grave. The two late Simons had had some kind of arrangement with Meyer, the details never explained to her, perhaps they'd helped start his business? That made sense to her, since they'd wished for nothing more than for her to go legit and clean, and she'd known they were close with some of Meyer's family members.

She shrugged mentally and headed inside, peering carefully around the front door as the bell jangled.

Teak Grove Trauma Center

The two Triad members sitting in the surgery waiting room weren't able to catch a sight of Alicia O'Donnel-Bauer herself...but the hospital knew the price of keeping neutral. Just as soon as she'd gotten back in the car, the nurse was on her way out of the monitoring station. The nurse's highly accented Mandarin hurt the Triadsters' ears, but the description came across loud and clear.

The senior soldier pulled out a cell phone and spoke quickly in his native language. "Tictac's staff came through for us. Two things. First, someone is already here asking questions, we have a description. A foreigner, Western woman. They offered us a chance to look at the security camera recording to get her face. Second, the one who drove Saint James to the hospital is a Dutch woman. Prisca Simon. We can start looking for her - huh? What's that?..." Instructions came through from the other side; the man grunted in acknowledgement and hung up.

"Come on. We have a stop to make at the Grand Casino and Hotel."

"After we get the image of the woman asking questions?" said the other man.

The senior Triadster stopped in the polished hallway and nodded. "Good, thank you for reminding me. Let's go."

[Forest State]

The TV was playing inside the place as Prisca opened the door - not really showing or talking about anything special, but rather the usual things that were going on around these islands. The newest story that was sweeping through the streets, the one about the record executive that had managed to get shot after coming in from off the islands, that hadn’t actually reached the news yet.

Or alternatively, this specific network had been slow to get to the story, or wasn’t showing it because it made these islands look worse in general and no one benefitted from the fear it might create. After all, people from countries with money often came to places like this because they would be able to live in peace and they would be untouchable. Someone coming here from abroad and ending up shot just like some local… Now that wouldn’t be good for business at all.

For Carl Meyer himself, this was one of the days when he was actually in the shop - but that didn’t mean he expected a visitor that was familiar and yet someone that he’d only actually seen in photographs. It was her grandparents he knew, not her. But if she was here, it probably wasn’t because of a coincidence.

These things tended to not be coincidences.

“You wouldn’t happen to be who I think you are, would you?” Meyer rose an eyebrow as Prisca entered, doing a quick double take towards her.

[Sylvanstreak]

The door shut quietly behind Prisca and she stepped sideways quickly, glancing out through the eyehole one more time just to be safe.

"I suppose not, but it'll depend on who you were expecting. We've never met as far as I know? I'm Prisca Simon - I think you've been in touch with my grandparents?"

She didn't wait for an answer as she reached up and began to take the cap off. A gesture more normal; but then stopped herself in case Carl turned her away. A flimsy disguise was still a disguise. "I'm in some trouble and I need help. I think I'm going to be drawing a lot of attention soon. Attention I don't want," she rattled off. "Someone's shot an off-islander, tourist or businesswoman, right in the Triads' backyard. I was there and got her to the hospital, but I don't want the Triads beating a path to my door for some personal attention. Positive or negative. Do you know of some way I could lay low for a while?"