![]() He operated under a dozen aliases, he never bragged about his exploits, he never fell prey to any of the ego traps that undid lesser hackers. I need your expertise.”Īmong the legions of black hats haunting the Nova Babylonia Net, Zen was a shadowed prince. “I am planning a run against the Void Collective. Clam chowder for Alex, pumpkin bisque for Zen, paired with a small basket of freshly-baked bread.Īnother half minute later, when the waiter was safely out of earshot, Alex spoke again. ![]() With exaggerated courtesy, he set down two bowls of soup. Half a minute later, a waiter approached the table. “I require your assistance in a matter of great delicacy,” Alex said. He thought it was a new start, a new life, an opportunity to reinvent himself with the skills he had learned from the now-disbanded Special Tasks Section. The second the Temple Commission was done with him, he packed his bags and fled to a small town on the other side of the country. For two whole years Zen had distanced himself from Babylon and its internecine power struggles. “You wouldn’t have reached out to me otherwise,” Zen said. Over the jazz, the conversations, the sounds of the engine, his voice was so soft Zen’s eyeshields kicked in, amplifying his words into intelligibility. He sounded like a transplant from a distant age, an age of lords and ladies, knights and dames, an age that died with the coming of the New Gods. His accent was posh, clipped, utterly foreign to Babylon. “I have a proposition for you,” Alex replied. But a man could only hold that intense, unyielding gaze for so long. No one-not their neighbors, not the waitstaff-noticed, or showed signs of noticing. Since the moment they had sat down and placed their orders, they had sat and stared and said nothing. A brass candle holder, flanked by a pair of glasses, stood between them. The white dining cloth was completely immaculate. The two men sat at the starboard quarter. The clear glass windows and roof offered customers complete visibility in every direction-and outside observers complete visibility into the dining deck. And who sat with him.įulton’s Riverboat and Restaurant silently sailed down the length of the Babylon River, its cruise perfectly timed for the length of a ten-course dinner, its wake churning up the reflected city lights. Diners talked, smiled, laughed, feasting in blissful ignorance, anchored in the unspoken and unconscious belief that nothing around them could shake up their world. Delicious scents-rich soups, boiled lobster, fried fish, grilled eel-filled his nose. Waiters in red vests and black pants circulated the dining deck, carrying large platters. Soft jazz played from discreetly-placed speakers. Outside the invisible boundaries of their table, the world continued to turn. They existed in a bubble of frozen space-time, just the two of them. A chunky gold watch, too huge for his minuscule wrist, added a splash of incongruous color.Īlex sat in silence, saying nothing, swallowing him up with his eyes. His black suit carried the faint sheen of premium silk, emphasizing his stick-thin limbs and tiny waist. Built like a beansprout, he had a bowling ball for a head balanced on a delicate neck resting on a scrawny torso. His face was perfectly, preternaturally smooth, sporting neither stubble nor stress lines. The black water captured the many-hued lights, diffused and muted them, and reflected them as shimmering rainbow screens and soft rippling shadows, a blurry, surrealistic impression of the greatest city in the world.Ī shame he had to share it with a black hat.Īlex stared at him with wide, unblinking eyes, blacker than the night, blacker than the Void. Soft red and yellows illuminated the waterfront, the sturdy towers and swooping cables of Founders Bridge, the ferries and lesser boats that plied the waters. ↑ Void Idol Hunter's Journal entry: "Rare artifact from a time before Hallownest, its spires twined in a unified form.Crowns and necklaces of light adorned the skyscrapers flanking the Babylon River, edifices of concrete and steel wreathed in multicolored flame.
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