MF1.0 - 55 - Evening Stroll

Stef stared at the clock. Night. Night was for sleeping.

Especially considering apparently she was going to be woken up only six hours after midnight. Being awoken at such an hour – and being expected to function as well – gave the entire Agency a new spin. A sinister one.

Punching the pillow until she imagined it crying for mercy, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and stood. She paced for a while to no avail – her mind was going over a hundred different things, and her fingers had the urge to type.

This wasn’t the kind of night she slept on.

She required the mirror back into existence and stared at it. The pyjama top she’d required less than half an hour ago looked as wrinkled as something that had escaped her laundry basket and went rogue. Which had happened more times than she cared to remember.

Laundry. Dishes. Cleaning the windows. Small tasks like that didn’t seem to be something recruits had to worry about. The building seemed to take care of itself. That, or there was a legion of laundry gnomes, washing-up gnomes and gnomes that ate unattended cookies.

She wondered if anyone would get mad at her if she set a trap.

‘Screw it,’ she muttered. She looked at the mirror briefly, then closed her eyes.

Require: uniform.

It was an unnatural feeling to feel fabric skating over skin, disappearing, morphing and growing. It was almost instantaneous, but she paid attention to the sensations. Little details kept the world real.

She liked the suit – though she had no intention of wearing the jacket like Ryan did. Wearing something like that in Brisbane in summer was suicide.

She wondered if his jacket had a built-in air conditioner.

Require: laptop bag.

She slipped Frankie into the blue bag, grabbed her ID from the bench and left the room. At least two of the other recruits were awake, and lacking soundproofing in the wall of their room.

The lift appeared as quickly as it always did and she punched the button for the ground floor.

Natalie was still behind the desk. ‘Going out again recruit?’ the secretary asked as she handed up the clipboard.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">‘Can’t sleep, want to go for a walk.’ Not quite true, but good enough.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">The secretary gave her a nod. ‘Be careful.’

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">She looked down at the uniform. ‘Yeah, guess I am a walking target.’ She shrugged and handed back the clipboard. ‘Not going far.’

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">The night did nothing to calm her. Urges to run, scream or hack into three banks simultaneously – which never worked, but was always fun – banged against the inside of her skull. She held Frankie close and just walked. There was no point looking for a bus, what busses there were this time of night were unreliable and usually darker than the night they were supposedly safe passage through.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">Train it was then.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">Central station wasn’t far – and the walk, the simple act of one foot in front of the other, calmed her a little. It was normal, so much as she hated it, it was what she needed.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">Nothing jumped out and attacked her, there were no ghosts or zeppelins so far as the eye could see, what few people she could see were on the other side of the street.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">She didn’t wait for the walk signal at the intersection near the coffee shop she’d been that morning, but she did pause in the middle of the street, just to glance up at the sky. A patch of sky that wasn’t obscured by buildings, though it was faint from the light pollution – there was no chance of seeing stars.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">A car honked and she jumped out of the way. A drunk leaned out the window and shouted something unintelligible then sped off into the night.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">‘Die in an alcohol-fuelled fire,’ she muttered under her breath, then strode quickly up the hill.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">Figuring an all-in-one ID/credit card/licence to kill might still not be good enough for the ticket inspectors, she required a few coins and stabbed her finger at the ticket machine until it responded. The machines were new, but already unreliable.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">Freshly printed ticket in hand, she waved it at the guard as she passed through the gates. The guard gave it a cursory glance and gave a vague nod.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">She leant against the escalator railing down to the platform and sighed at the timetable screen. The next train wasn’t due for a while.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">Pulling Frankie from the bag, she stared at the reflections on his case until someone blocked her light.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,CenturyGothic,Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">‘Hello Spyder.’