Maria was a highly paid, utterly anonymous courier in a sprawling metropolis. She didn't carry packages; she carried messages in her mind. Her brain was subtly augmented to hold and encrypt sensitive data, which she delivered by physically crossing boundaries the digital world couldn't.
The city was clean, efficient, and surveilled. Maria navigated the blind spots, moving like smoke. The plaza was buzzing with life. The man with the red hat was there, right on time.
She approached him, a casual pedestrian. Just walk past him, brush shoulders, the voice in her ear instructed.
As she brushed past, the man didn’t move. A woman nearby dropped her purse, coins scattering. Maria froze. A distraction.
The "man in the red hat" was a trap. The contact was dead, a puppet propped up to lure her out.
Maria didn't think. She dumped the data from her head onto a cheap data-stick she kept in her sock, deleting the source from her gray matter in seconds. She tossed the stick into the dropped purse and kept walking, melting into the crowd.
She made the drop later, in a dead-end alley using an old news paper dispenser. The voice on the line was furious about the change of protocol.
Maria just took her payment and disappeared into the night. Her greatest skill wasn't carrying the message; it was making sure no one knew she was gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment