Abukoff House Books

Zyphis 1138 had been pulled away from her search for Jon Muti and his associates but was ordered to remain, undercover, in Chicago. She was to observe an as yet unidentified man apparently living on the streets far removed from the circles and neighborhoods that Muti frequented. The unidentified man was not a target for assassination. Just observation and protection. More details, as they became necessary, would be revealed. Neighborhood, cross street, and exact coordinates had been transmitted, and she was to take up station, report in, and await further orders. She found him quickly and reported in. Then she watched him for a week, sometimes from the window and sometimes at street level, incognito, to get a read on the neighborhood and its denizens, all the while awaiting further orders.

They finally came in a burst comm packet. They reiterated that the man wasn’t a target, but listed as a person of interest by the Earth Star Empire’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) and that his life might be in danger and must be protected at all costs. She wasn’t told any more about him than that. And as those orders came from Command, she didn’t question them. Indeed, it wasn’t unusual in her experience that the people who questioned orders from Command, even privately, tended to become themselves persons of interest.

He was bald and looked old, from the myriad lines that ran across his forehead as well as his slightly hollowed eyes. A closer look, on full magnification, showed hollow cheeks and a nose that had probably been broken at some point and allowed to heal crooked. An unkempt goatee with irregular patches of white. A faded green military jacket. Infantry. With faded cloth decorations over the left breast. At this distance, through the scope, she guessed that the decoration was from a Khanate campaign. Early twenty-third century. There was no rank insignia visible, but there shouldn’t be. Nobody that looked like that was active duty, and ex-military were not allowed to wear rank insignia.

So what was it about him that made him a person of interest? The question came unbidden and she pushed it aside. His picture had already been captured by software in the scope and uploaded for identification to a Ministry of Communications satellite in orbit. That was the extent of her interest in his identity. So she watched and she waited as he reclined in the doorway of a business that wasn’t open yet. The street was lined with pawn shops and liquor stores and bail bondsmen, and she had been posted in an empty apartment three flights up and directly across from his location. There were few cars- a few cars, but mostly light commercial trucks as well as intermittent foot traffic along the sidewalk, about what could be expected on a Monday at five am, with dawn just creeping into the sky.

As light from a turning truck lit up the sidewalk ten feet away from the subject, a dog appeared from an alley between the buildings. The breed was unclear, but its fur was matted and parts had been lost in clumps, as if from fighting or disease or both. It walked unsteadily along the sidewalk until it saw her subject. Then it stopped, its head lowered and its fangs bared. This was an animal that was accustomed to fighting for survival and against starvation and the elements. Zyphis had gotten something like that from the appearance of the man, but had only recognized that once she saw the dog. The man too was a fighter. An old fighter who now struggled to survive. She doubted that the dog had been sent to harm the man- it wasn’t unheard of, even as a tool of the Earth Star Empire, but it seemed unlikely. There would be little need for such tactic in a neighborhood like this. But it was still a potential threat and couldn’t be ignored.

She could see that he’d noticed the animal, his eyes ceasing their apparently sleepy observation of the street scene and locking onto the beast as it stopped and looked at him from a distance. Her instincts- the ingrained tendency to pick out targets, even on a crowded field, made her size up the two of them. They were both tired, but she sensed more feral desperation from the dog. The man was tired and possibly intoxicated, and lacking the animalistic desperation of the dog. The dog had at least an even chance of surviving any encounter. So she trained the scope on the dog’s head and followed its unsteady progress down the sidewalk and towards the man.

Mister Black had been watching the woman for the same week that she’d been watching him. Twice she’d walked past him, pulling a ragged suitcase behind her, gathering up tattered clothes tightly around herself as she avoided his gaze. Once she’d been driving a late nineties sedan that drifted slowly past him, coughing out illegal levels of chemical laden steam that had replaced the C02 emissions of centuries past. Once she was apparently passed out against a dumpster less than tweny feet away from him, surrounded by insects and the stench of heroin and whiskey. The smell was so bad that even the wandering animals had started to avoid her. She lay there for nearly an entire day as everyone moved around her. Then, as he’d awoken the next day, she was gone.

For two days he didn’t see her. She was either gone or hiding very well. Then she reappeared in the window where he’d first spotted her. Watching him, with what looked like a weapon. A slender, almost reed-like rifle that wasn’t to be found outside of the Ministry of Defense. That put a definite spin on things. She was obviously an assassin, obviously targeting him. And over the course of the last week she’d had plenty of opportunities to kill him. So why was she still there, waiting and watching? Why was he still alive? And in the back of his mind, the insidious, niggling question. What had he done? it wasn’t hard to become an enemy of the Empire, but he was smart. Never careless. He didn’t ask fatal questions. He knew where the line was and he avoided it at all times. When he realized that there was no answer to that, he filed the worry away in a sealed compartment in his mind and focused on the current situation. She was still there, still watching him. For an instant, he caught a side view of her face as she turned from him and looked to his left.

He followed her gaze to see an old dog slowly and unsteadily making its way down the sidewalk. It looked old, in any case. Four spindly legs, fur gone on clumps. Ribs painfully visible. What fur remained was badly matted, its head hung down low and its fangs were bared. It was in survival mode.

Eventually, as he knew they would, its dark eyes came to rest on him and it stopped. It made a low growl and backed up almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t a retreat so much as it was appraising him as a target or a threat. Mr Black felt no animosity towards the creature. In its position he would feel the same way. Anything new was a potential threat. It had to be looked at that way. Untold centuries ago, wolves had seen men as threats before they decided to partner with them. This dog had reverted to that stage now, and the backstreets of Chicago were just as much wilderness as ancient Earth had once been.

“It’s okay boy.” He tried to sound commanding and soothing at the same time. The dog was unlikely to respond to something that simple, but it was also the least threatening gesture he could make. No movement. No eye contact. Seated as he was, apparently relaxed, with no threatening body language. He didn’t even put a hand out to be sniffed. Just a voice that might take some of the edge off the creature’s nerves.

And how would the assassin react to this? He chanced moving his gaze to the window across the street. She was watching. In fact, the slender MoD sniper rifle had moved just slightly. Less than an inch from her perspective (he knew this because he’d done her job before, years ago), but a difference of several feet down here on the sidewalk. She’d trained her attention and gun on the dog. It was wrong and stupid and unnecessary. The dog could be dealt with. Calmed down. He wanted to shout at her, but realized that it would only escalate things, so he reached into his pocket for a protein snack made of meat and cheese and processed egg. They made a decent, easily concealed survival ration here on the streets. And might just help to make an ally of the dog.

The movement of his hand, however, triggered something in the dog. The head went lower, the fangs became more visible. The growl got a bit louder. The muscles tensed to jump. And somehow, through all of that, he could sense the assassin reacting. In that small window across the street and three flights up, he knew she was making the decision. He knew that she’d drawn the breath that they all took before taking the shot. Her finger would be on the trigger, getting ready to shoot the dog. And suddenly that half dead creature was more important to him than anything else. Including his assignment.

He had the protein snack in his hand, and he threw it past the dog, back in the direction it had come from. The dog hesitated for just a second, and he feared that that would cost it its life. So he made the split second decision that was the only thing he could do. He jumped up on legs that had fallen asleep from sitting in one position for too long. He couldn’t feel them, not even a tingling of nerves. They were essentially dead, and he could only lunge and hope that they supported him. The dog was focused on the snack that he’d tossed. The assassin would be watching and probably hesitating. He only had an instant, he knew. So he slammed into the dog, shoving it roughly against a storefront that he hoped took it out of her line of sight. Then her felt a sharp pain dig into his side, and he collapsed into darkness.

Zyphis 1138 was squeezing the trigger as the man lunged on unsteady legs to push the dog out of the way. There was nothing she could do but watch the bullet catch him just under his right arm and leave a bloody hole in his coat. Then he dropped, and the dog ran. She’d failed.

She was forced to wait in that apartment for two weeks until she finally received a response to her report, in the form of a short and slight bespectacled man from the MoD who arrived with a field recording kit and nothing else. He gleaned every minute detail of the incident from her, taking it all in with the clinical detachment of a mortician. And then, as if it was all of no interest to him, he put away his recording equipment and went to the door. Before opening it, he paused. “You were his final test. He passed. You failed.” Then he opened the door, but stopped again. “You were meant to lose. One of you were, anyway. Resume your pursuit of Jon Muti.”

Mr Black woke up screaming. He was inside of a hard plastic compartment, with what felt like thousands of tiny, invisible needles sticking in his side. Where her bullet had struck him. His hand automatically moved to that spot, feeling for the blood that must be there. It was, but it was drying, and the entire area was ice cold. A disembodied male voice whispered in his ear. “You were careless. You were seen. You’ll need a new face.” He tried to reply, but all he could get out was an incoherent croak. “Don’t speak, listen,” it said. “One of you were meant to pass, one of you to fail. She won’t forget it. Or you.”