Kira blew against the steaming hot tea in front of her. Her eyes were fixated across the street on a house a little too run down for District 10. According to the file that crossed her desk, the place was occupied by a lowly drug dealer. Said drug dealer apparently knew about a Blacklight safehouse in the district stocked with cash, IDs, weapons; all manner of things that nobody wanted in the hands of a street gang. She didn’t care about where the place was; that wasn’t part of her orders, nor did she have a need for anything there. Her task was not to find the physical goods, but to find out how a street dealer knew about this. The thug had the right idea keeping around a huge male with a big gun for protection, but speed, surprise, and fifty thousand volts would take care the would-be bodyguard handily.

She took a quick sip of her tea, stood, and walked out of the café patio across the street. A junkie was banging on the door, probably desperate for a fix. That had been the queue to move, just in case it spooked him. A hulking black figure opened the door and argued with the druggie. 10 had a fairly bad drug problem for its average wealth, but it did a good job of hiding it from view. A junkie on a crowded street in broad daylight wasn’t common here. Stepping back onto the sidewalk from the street, it was less than half a block to her target. She unbuttoned her jacket for quick access to her sidearm. [i]Approach harmlessly, rush the guard with a baton, shock him, draw weapon and sweep the house, interrogate at gunpoint.[/i] She ran through her approach one more time in her mind. She never bothered anything more than a basic plan for something low-risk like this. After all, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

She was just two doors away and was about to reach for her stun baton, but her phone chimed. She slowed her pace slightly and clicked her earpiece. [b]“Takeda.”[/b]
It was Mack at the most inconvenient time, [b]“we need you to come in, priority assignment.”[/b]
[b]“I’m a little busy Mack,”[/b] she answered curtly, [b]“can it wait?”[/b]
[b]“This takes precedence. We need you at HQ stat; wave off.”[/b]
Mack always had a funny way of pronouncing ‘H’ with his thick Bristol accent. Kira’s response was punctuated with a frustrated sigh, [b]“fine. Are there travel arrangements?”[/b]
[b]“First class train ticket at Central-West concierge, no questions asked. You leave in an hour.”[/b]

She clicked her earpiece again to hang up on Mack and kept walking. She gave a quick glance to the front door of the dealer’s hideout as she passed by, irritated that Mack would pull her off an assignment right before it was go-time. The com-van was a block down the street on the far side as she headed off towards the train station. She gave the van a quick glare in passing and kept moving.
[hr]As promised, there were zero questions asked at the train station. She was waved right past security and onto the train with barely a glance. The eggheads in C-war sure did good work with getting documents. The way things usually worked, a company car would be waiting for her when she made it to District 4.