In the safe embrace of invisibility, two people stare motionlessly at the empty corner of a building. The woman with porcelain skin fixes her green eyes towards the asphalt and silently orders her gaze to enhance sharpness. While her focus dives into deeper layers of awareness, she feels a familiar warmth in the nape of her neck. Her embedded microchip dutifully receives, processes, and renders information “from the other side”, as agents like to call it. Subtlety, both mental and physical, is of utmost importance in this line of work, so they take great care to render it there and here, then and now.
Merla, a voice in the corner of her mind says, stretched as if with distance, your target approaches in one minute and seven seconds. He is not in a good mood.
“Are they ever?” she mutters, rolling her eyes.
Her colleague, a chunk weighing almost two hundred kilos, snorts. Merla has worked with Crever long enough to recognize what passes for laughter with him. Although he has heard the same things she has, thanks to his own microchip, Merla knows he will say nothing. He never does.
Point, the voice in their heads agrees, mood swings are common with these artistic types.
Crever shrugs. He cannot care less about the troubles of their subjects, not even when he causes them. It definitely has something to do with the fact that he is actually a mechanical device that only appears humanoid. Merla, on the other hand, harbors somewhat different feelings. She knows what it is like to be human. And an artist, to boot.
READ THE FULL STORY IN A SHORT STORY COLLECTION 'HYPNAGOGIA'.
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