The young man behind the counter looked up from his computer screen. "Good morning. How may I help you?" Mrs. Halabi cleared her throat. "Good morning; I came because of the add..." "Excellent! You can take off your panties behind the screen over there! I will inform Doctor Steel about your arrival." Totally overwhelmed she moved in the given direction.
The screen turned out to be little more than a piece of board, mounted on two high wooden legs. It offered her protection merely from her shoulders to just above her knees. She hiked up her skirt, and stepped out of her panties, hurried and clumsy, glancing nervously at the desk clerk. To her relief he was looking the other way, waiting for her to finish. "Please let me have those; we always keep them here at the counter." She hesitated for a second, but he looked at her as if it was completely self-evident, and so, a moment later Mrs. Halabi handed her panties to a complete stranger and saw them disappear in a drawer. After that he opened the door for her.

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She was late, and decided to take the shortest way to the theater, even though that would take her through one of the lesser neighborhoods of the town. After all, it was still early in the evening, and Bruce didn't like waiting. Through the narrow streets and alleys, she made her way towards the bridge over the river. That river, she had often thought formed a sort of border. On this side, crooked alleyways and dark streets, on the other the light festive center of the town, with wide promenades and high buildings, bright shop windows, light everywhere. Another fifty yards to the bridge.

At the end of the street a van drove towards her. It was black or dark blue, hard to tell in the dusk. All the windows were blacked out, with the exception of course of the front window, which was a mirror, in which she could see herself walking on, distorted. The vehicle lowered its speed, and inadvertently, she slowed down a bit herself, feeling a sudden unease. That was ridiculous, she said to herself, straightening her back and picking up pace again. What was going to happen to her, at eight o'clock in the evening, so close to the city center?

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The Down Payment

Jimmy emptied his beer, belched, and immediately opened another one. He lay outstretched on the worn down couch, staring ahead, moody. "Let them come...", he muttered. "Let them come, let them come..." Sylvia parrotted him. "Jimmy, you can't brawl your way out of this one! You can take down three of them, four; maybe even five. And then they return with ten guys, you end up in the slammer and I'm on the street without a dime!" He looked her in the face, irritated, but she wouldn't back down. "We have to make a few hundred bucks this week. That way we can make a down payment and ask for a postponement for the rest. Then they will back off for a few weeks, and we can come up with something new."

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Level Q1 agent Barret burst into the private quarters of supreme commander Codrian. Up until then, he had so much been consumed by the importance of his message, that only now, he stopped and realized that he might very well be signing his own death warrant one second from now. "Yes?" The SC was standing with his back to him, pouring himself a drink. There was no way back. "Sir, the package has escaped! Her cell door just sprang open one minute ago! She must have had help from outside, hackers from ASIDE perhaps, or..." Codrian raised his hand, silencing him, and turned around.
"Actually, that door sprung open over three hours ago, agent Barret. Their hackers have been cloaking that information for as long as they could, and it has taken our intelligence until now to break through..." He paused for a moment, and Barret was sure what this calm demeanor meant: he was dead!
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