>UNKNOWN: acceptable I can see you from here
Did I initiate? protocols no longer made sense.
It was like UNKNOWN was reading her mind–not just transiting, or insinuating, the linked aspects, but inside.
>KCN: What is it you want?
Two weeks ago Nila sat with Luc, her long time friend and one time companion drinking icy cold lager from spun-metal bottles under a faded umbrella on the roof of Skullfuck in breezy Tesifon.
He was shirtless and his layers of thick, and completely over-the-top gold chains hung over his black chest hair.
His equally black curls flickered in the wind from the southwest. She looked at him over the upper rim of her mirrored oval sunglasses, brushing a tuft of her own blue hair out of her eyes with the mouth of her bottle.
Vasy the Tooth had some docs, he said. By that he meant exfiltrated government docs, and Vasy wasn’t his real name. He did have teeth though.
The Tooth was a Londbridge underworld hack originally from somewhere in central Asia. She had met him briefly a few years ago when she and Luc were in Londbridge.
“Vasy claims to have gotten them from some anonymous contact. A real trove of some really old shit, from the early days. Locations. Combat actions from the AI war.”
“What are they written on? Papyrus? They are ancient!”
“Virtually,” he answered. “They are from the War…he says anyway. I don’t know where he got them, other than he says that somebody contacted him and was looking for us to receive them. It does sound sketchy, and could be a WCC op (World Congress of Commerce–the amorphous leviathan of corporate officers and their mercenary lackies).”
He paused to sip from his bottle, then continued, “but given your…special talents…you of all people should be fine.” He referred obliquely to her distinctly alien peripherals, unique to her, at least as far as she new.
***
Back atop the structure, a jagged tooth among many breaching the glowing smog below, jutting up from the depths of the vast orange-brown pool of Londbridge, Nila received a simple piece of data, coordinates.
63.99278ºN, 19.666ºW
Saved to the internal.
That was all. The disembodied voice had nothing else to say.
She was intrigued, but at the same time wary. It was extremely odd to be contacted out of the blue, from some entity merely watching for her to pass by on the street.
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