[b]Vates - His apartment, Tuborg Heights, Sovereign[/b]

Vates sat behind the massive u-bend table with his face buried in his hands. His hands slid up his face so that his palms could rub his eyes of the tiredness. Sitting back he let out an audible sigh, frustrated at the information that lay before him. He had gotten wind of something potentially big, a large project being funded by the Leginian Council which was almost a sin to talk about. They didn't want anyone to know about the plans being put in place and Vates still couldn't fathom why. From the tiny pieces of information he managed to scrounge it appeared that they were building some sort of construct around the edges of the city, but the details still eluded him and when he attempted to see the work himself was met by discrete military outposts both new and old scattered along the areas the construction was taking place. He could not work out what they were building either. Some rumours alluded to the possibility of a shield of some kind, but what purpose would that serve? Greater control over comings and goings? Over smuggling? Any reason that he could think of did not appropriate the need for such a project. The city would not stand for such rigid controls over immigration nor would it really benefit from it. Smuggling did not appear to be of massive concern to the Army previously either. There was something amiss. The information he had was worthless as it was; whilst lesser brokers might not think so, Vates was a man who understood that information meant nothing without context. 

The bleeping of his alarm clock meant that he had run out of time to think about it anyway. He had to go meet with a young client who was looking for an old friend, and he had idea of where she could find him. 

Standing up into a joint cracking stretch Vates took an appreciative look around his secret office. Vates penthouse apartment appeared to occupy the top two floors (including a nice little roof terrace) of the complex, but in actuality housed an entire secret third floor below. It was used by the previous tenant, a cunning smuggler now deceased, to store goods and act as a safe-room. Whilst there were electronic security systems in place, Vates felt safer in the knowledge that due to the secret old-school style vault door that the room would still be functional in the unlikely case that he lost power. What made Vates feel even more secure was that to the best of his knowledge he was the only one who knew about it, having come across the deceased smugglers diary locked away on a previous job. Vates knew everything about the building, including the various escape routes and weak spots. Like for example the fact the building contained no stairs, instead relying on a nearby private fire-fighting firm to conduct any rescues – the drill was that tenants would remain by their windows and be picked up by shuttles; Vates however knew that there was a ladder in the elevator shaft that could be used if need be.