Part 2 - Chatter 17

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Decked out in close-fitting gym clothes, Alice Mould ran on a treadmill in her sparsely furnished, functional living space overlooking Maximo Park. Her heart and feet pounded and she growled, inspired to run harder by the muted Chancellor Malachy delivering empty rhetoric on her Visi.

Completing her workout, Alice sipped sports drink from a bottle and reached for a towel. Monitoring her pulse, she stripped off her sweat soaked clothes and moving in to the bathroom, she stared at the reflection in her mirror and liked what she saw. No one ever saw the agent with a hair out of place and in the sanctity of her own home and her own thoughts the façade did not fall. The cold pretension, the empty soullessness remained, as did the contempt she possessed for the dullards that were both friend and foe.

Alice caught herself reflecting, a TraitCrime brain wave sullying her thoughts; clutching the basin sink she let her eyes bore in to the mirror and began trying to clear her mind, but it was difficult. Angry with her lack of self control, she stepped back from the basin and looked at the rippling star-crack in the mirror then at her clenched fist which she realised had done the damage. Splashing her face with cold water, she sighed.

The Ministry was blithely ignorant of the nascent resistance movement rooted in Loyalist mythology. Not a soul in authority paid particular attention to the amount of god-fodder her Agents of Change were creating in the name of Futurist autocracy just as long as the Ministers could keep their snouts in the troughs and as long as the happy-clappers could sleep soundly at night. And for all they cared, as long as she did her job, there was no need to worry. Whilst they lived in denial, she was papering the cracks.

A lump of unease churned in the pit of her stomach. It was fine and dandy when it was misguided fools she was feeding to the mincer for disseminating Loyalist pamphlets but this Raven fellow was something else and it didn't sit right. As far as the system was concerned, Archie Raven didn't exist. Never had. Alice wanted to know more but he was too good at sidestepping her techniques and it irked her. Now that Malachy had decided to use the old man to entertain the masses, she didn't have much time to extract the truth and it motivated her to unlock his secrets. If only they could locate his miscreant grandson Alistair, then she would have something to damage, something for the old man to spill his guts for.

Showering and dressing, Alice Mould ate a simple nutrino-meal and messaged her key Agents her maxim: contain, cleanse and confute. Applying simple makeup, she affixed her gauntlets and blades and tugged on her leather gloves, scrunching her hands in to fists. Something had to be done to nip in the bud this non-conformity, but first, Alice decided to pay Robert Thompson another visit. Being a bookworm, Robert had undertaken a quest for her, promising that the Crown of England could be hers. Considering the resources and faith she had bestowed upon the curator to fulfil his promise, it was high time Robert solved the mystery of its whereabouts. Then, with much pomp and fanfare, she would crush this symbol and the Loyalists would be dead and buried forever.

Marching to her transport, little did Alice Mould realise, in her keeping was the man who knew exactly where the Crown was hidden. Worse yet for the Stormtrooper in stilettos, the captive man's grandson and his newfound friend were already conspiring to discover it first.  

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