![]() She’s so used to taking on different identities that she hardly notices the malleable mask hugging her face. Yesterday she was a hard-working courier braving Augustgrad’s congested streets on a hoverbike until she made a delivery to the apartment of another liaison named Rebecca Schafer. Two days ago she was a bright-faced bartender, politely catering to customers until a Dominion military liaison named Colton Miersma died of sudden heart failure after a night of heavy drinking. She’s just walking among them.įor four months she has taken on dozens of identities in Augustgrad. She has made an art out of fitting in, of masking who she really is.Ī wolf in sheep’s clothing, her mentor and team leader, Sage, had called her once. Then again, Pandora’s profession is all about appearance. She misses being back home in the Umojan Protectorate, where practicality outweighs carefully manicured appearances. ![]() Her body is baking under the tight-fitting black Dominion liaison uniform. Grimy sweat clings to her palms, between her fingers, and around the synthetic skin covering the hollowed-out neosteel chamber on her right hand, the weapon carefully made to look like the thumb she lost on Anselm. The surroundings have shifted from the city’s monolithic high rises to a network of factories churning out everything from hoverbikes to packaged food. Pandora shifts her hands on the steering wheel of the four-wheeled groundcar as it rumbles through the outskirts of Augustgrad. Fear dictated her life then, but she is different now. She shakes off the memories of Anselm and wonders why now, of all times, she is remembering. As Pandora struggles to her feet, all she can think about is how she would have come home to Umoja a hero if the deserter were still alive, if she hadn’t been so afraid to take a risk….Ī bump in the road knocks Pandora out of her daydream. The wife adjusts her aim but doesn’t fire again. She’s down on her knees, gritting her teeth, when the next needle grazes her shoulder. ![]() The first tears through Pandora’s right hand and takes her thumb off. Two painful reminders of failure and its consequences. She jerks her arm up, a needle-gun clenched in her quivering hand. You’re a coward,” the wife says, her voice suddenly shrill and crazed. She quickly erects a mental barrier to block out the wife’s chilling despair. Pandora doesn’t sense rage in the woman she senses the overwhelming cold nothingness that comes when you’ve lost everything that matters. When he warned you the Dominion was coming, you did nothing,” she says in a low trembling voice. The wife lifts her head, dried blood caked around her face. Pandora had let fear take control, and now she sees the grisly result. We succeeded: you failed.Īlthough she’d had a chance to pull the deserter and his family out, she’d hesitated. But to Pandora it’s a stinging taunt from her adversaries. This is the price of deserting the Dominion. It’s a message written in blood for Anselm’s populace. The wife’s face has been slashed and disfigured to leave scars that only the most expensive nanite surgery will heal. The daughter’s arms are gone below the elbows, the raw stumps carefully dressed by the same men who crippled her. ![]() His wife and daughter huddle nearby, bloody and trembling. Slabs of flesh cling to a wall above an almost unrecognizable corpse. Pandora pushes past the onlookers and through the battered safe house door, which had been blasted open by a concussive grenade half an hour ago. A crowd stands outside the safe house on Anselm, the people shifting and jostling and craning their necks for a chance to see blood. ![]()
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