Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Kurtis woke into near darkness, which itself was unusual. Oh four hundred on the button, his body clock having sync’d to local time when he got here a few days ago. His bloodstream was already coursing with adrenaline and the usual cocktail of morning wakeup drugs, which was also evidence of a problem as he wasn’t scheduled to wakeup for another two hours.

Something was happening. An incursion of some kind? Hit squad? The fact it was on the hour suggested a military washout squad, as this is the kind of amateur scheduling he’d expect at that level, not being random enough for actual professionals.

He was on his feet now, boots lacing themselves as he shouldered into his jacket and then became motionless, still as stone listening through the ambient sounds of a several hundred year old mid-rise for the sounds that didn’t belong.

Boots, in a stairwell on the other side of the bathroom wall, maybe two floors, no three floors down, walking softly but steady.

He’d miss breakfast, which he’d been really looking forward to. Someone was going to answer for that.

He moved slowly, but surely, footsteps in a staggered, nearly silent anti-pattern to the bathroom door, the creaking of the floor blending into the building’s background noise, and waited.

The footsteps on the other side of the wall grew clearer, four bodies, the familiar sound of strapped weapons straining on tethers, the breathing of men accustomed to exertion, the regular pause at the landings to check sitelines.

Kurtis opened fire through the wall as they stopped at the door on his floor, reducing the lath and plaster wall to dust in a firehose of high calibre anticipatory violence. When the noise stopped, he moved from the room to the hall, to the door at the top of the stairs, roughly shouldering it open to survey the carnage.

Nobody was left moving.

He stepped over the bodies and worked his way cautiously eleven floors to the ground. It would be some time before his hearing would have settled to provide much advance notice, so he relied on caution and his other senses. On the street a RoboCargo van sat in the loading zone. He wondered how long it would wait before abandoning its hold pattern and returning home. He climbed inside, sirens approaching from a distance. Breakfast would have to wait. Best not be here when the authorities arrived, besides, someone just tried to kill him, and he was going to hitch a ride back to find out exactly who and ensure they would not try that again.