24 September, 2050

Going by her real name in the post v-revolution world, unlike her twin WonderGurl, Lena stared at him, the speaker to her ear. 

Across the window pane in the Correctional Facility's meeting room, her eyes always threw daggers at him. But Harry knew the daggers rained from a keenness of spirit rather than veiled aggression. For him at least. 

A badass case worker for the Department of Children and Families, Lena had often gone up against mean, bigger parties in her bid to win rights for her clients. Her first foray into the prison had been revenge by a sore loser of custody rights with secret connections to the Aryan Brotherhood. 

But that was the Lena of before.

He ignored the daggers.

"How they treat you here, Lena? Do they come at you for no reason? Do these guards give you grief?"

Lena tilted her head and squinted her eyes. "Why the superficial queries today?" She relished every morsel of sound she voiced into words. The cordial had bubbled her up again. 

He chuckled self-consciously. He had always refrained from intrusiveness, even when he wondered how she fared behind bars. 

"It's just that ... things been happening lately ... can't put my finger on anything yet ... just ... they seem to be coming together in a bad way ... Maybe I'm thinking too much." He played with the cuff of his jacket as he rambled. 

Embers shot into his vision from the dull green waters of a deep, deep lake. Some shooting sparks bequeath warmth more than they sting. He gulped the image down his throat and blinked to clear his mind. 

"Haven't things been going bad since the turn of the century? Every decade they just get worser than before." Lena returned his philosophical mood and smiled her braces at him. Oddly, he had never seen her without those, the one year he had known her. "What brings you back, sworn brother?"

He gave her a precis of The Dismantler puzzle. Prison was a buzzing hive of criminal underworld and this time Len had a way in. He rambled on with his personal theory about the assignment, but stopped when, instead of an encouraging spark on Len's face, he saw the skeptical twist of her mouth.

"You don't have zit to go by, Slash Dash. They're baiting you. That's what that sound like to me." She teased a ribbon weaved into a strand of her hair hugging the side of her face. Her dismissive response earned a chuckle from the boy.

"What in the world would the Bureau gain by that?" Harry's mind couldn't reconcile the image of Timothy Ross's face and the idea of baiting. "It's just absurd."

"I dunno, they testing ya? Seeing what you can come up with ..."

"Let's just backtrack a moment here. A big enough party. Could be huge by the sound of it. After a priceless load that someone stole from them ... they set their boogeymen on the trail, like, all over the place ... look at the list of the places here ... Montana, Utah, Virginia, Winnipeg, more. The target is moving. And obviously evading them. Now look at the name ... The Dismantler? You know what that word means, right?"

She had been chewing gum, amused with Harry's drowning man attitude, clutching at straws to stay afloat. But she thought of him as her little brother so she keyed in some empathy. 

"An agent that would topple a structure, take apart a set-up ..."

"Exactly. The runaway's possession is of such huge significance-"

"Allegedly," she spoke interrupting the glazed-eye boy.

"It threatens the big party in a big way. Why else would they ... Heck, the sender could be FBI, for all I know--"

"Whoa ... whoa ..." She raised up a hand and an eyebrow. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. You don't know who the sender is. Secondly, your loser boss came up with that name."

"Yeah, but it's apt. I've read the file twice, Len." 

She blew a low whistle at that, obviously amused. The tattooed woman on her left turned a wobbly eye at them but went back to her own conversation. 

Harry drew a deep breath. 

"That's alright, Len. I'm wasting your time." Disappointment in his eyes, he made to get up from his seat.

"Hey, no scooting. Get that ass back in that chair." She got the gum out of her mouth and delicately wrapped it in a paper napkin she had been holding. "I don't think it's our usual criminal organization. I know that's what you'd in mind coming here."

"Why not?" Harry bunched up his bushy brows.

"Cuz ... look at the mob ... or Aryan Brotherhood or anything else. There have been hundreds of busts, arrests, convictions. No one's toppling. These criminal groups are loose collections of families or like-minded groups all with their own playgrounds, running their own gigs at their own turf. Tribes. They don't have a central governing body with devastating secrets at it's core that can't see the light of the day or else the castle would fall to earth."

Harry was excitedly nodding his head as Lena finished. "That was an awfully long sentence, but I followed it." 

"Go buy some candy," she joked.

"So... what other type of organization could it be then?" Eagerness personified.

"As far as I'm concerned, all the big ones, criminal or regular, have dirty cores in their soul bone and the marrow best stay put. Some swindled money offshore, some waged wars on browns, some still enslave blacks. Some went and killed the planet. Gallons and gallons of taxpayer blood in the closets. Topple them all I say." She finished with a flourish and made a sucking sound as if she had Hershey in her mouth. "In all seriousness, it's like if someone hacked a hidden folder on Zuckerberg's most personal computer containing all his transgressions and set loose."

"So, basically 2031 all over again?" Harry's eyes lit up but quickly saw reason. "But of course, I can't get any blood rush to my head yet. It's too diffuse. It could be any of them. The big ones. Or it could be something not too important in the last reveal ..." 

The broadness of the assignment finally dawned on him. A throwaway job with a low chance of success pivoting on lots of luck. Sender baits the Bureau. Bureau baits the lackey. Throwaway job for throwaway kid.

Lena could see the pages turning in the book of his face and stop on a not too happy one. 

"But I can definitely send my feelers out. Keep a keener ear." 

"Minions, I'm guessing?" Harry's mood lightened somewhat. "Speaking of minions ... do you have sausage for me?"

Lena threw a mischievous glance at the wall clock on Harry's side. "It's about time you asked." 

Harry's phone vibrated at his hip. 

"Right on cue." Harry's face relaxed into a smile. 

"Minion on the go," said the smug queen.

"Thanks. I'm sure it'd be useful." For the Monitor.

"Oh, it's a doozy." She liked what he had done with the last one and licked her lips at the memory. She'd broken a 'wife' locked up for aiding in escape of her husband, the leader of a child trafficking ring. In a rum-aided stupor of depression, remorse and vengeance, the wifey had coughed up his location. Harry had left an anonymous tip for the local mob henchman whose own child had been mistakenly kidnapped by the ring and returned all kinds of broken. This had earned Harry a three-month rent in side income. Rare but gourmet. 

"Howz my brother's brother?" Lena had been meaning to ask for some time.

"Reb told you?" Although Reba, the WonderGurl, strictly preferred her v-id in the public sphere, Harry let slip the nickname in closed-off quarters. He should have been careful.

"You don't tell, busybody." 

"The last tip-off helped me put him up nicely." 

"So I heard." 

For some reason, shadows dulled Harry's features. 

"What up with his legs?" Lena teased. 

"I'm in a rut. Medusa won't acknowledge me as Brian's 'anyone'. So no treatment, let alone checkup." The corners of his mouth had dipped again. 

"I can help you there. He's my kid bro, by extension, you know," Lena winked saucily. "This place I'm dining at these days…," she flicked her head toward the inside of the prison as she said that, "I got some live wires set up. I'll get a tack in. Reb will get to you." 

"Reb? But ..." Being an upstanding citizen was an overstated ethic at the Bureau. Lena had long blurred her ethics to match the pace of reality.

"She's she and I'm I. I won't stop her from doing her thing. And she's not going out of her way to stop me either. I'll tell her to drop in tomorrow. I should've something by then." 

"I can't thank you enough," Harry said. 

***

She was tired.

Tired of being on the waitlist. Tired of being the doormat. Tired of being the unused wine glass left on the farthest corner of a sparkling shelf because it was easy on the eyes and added appeal to the diner. 

She fished out her phone, and let magic appear on the plain white screen from the wands of her fingers. She was twenty beds safe from being spotted by the night sentry by the bars.

After the last acrostic line in Singing Lines, she killed the Quill and opened QuickChat. The view metamorphosed into a holographic image that plunged inwards turning her screen into a gigabyte aquarium. Her Avatar jumped up front from a wall of suspended get-ups - her active contacts. Hers was a threeway fusion between a Centaur, Shining Armor and Ariana Grande, set to wink and flip the coiffured mane at hello. 

She entered the gallery and swung deep between the hanging signs of her favorited clubs and other hangouts. She knocked on Conchobar and immediately transformed into a ditzy, glammed up blonde in four-inch heels wearing a flaming red gown with inviting cutouts. She went to the farthest service deck and expertly refracted incoming pings from mohawked rockstars, chained and tattooed impressarios, and leather-wearing Fonzi revivalists. As soon as the last stool of the desk near her was vacated, she slid onto it and ordered a margarita. 

The undulating melody from a nearby violinist mingled with the beats of Afrotek, creating a mystic rhythm. It emanated voiceless from the phone's jack, but filled her real ears via her dollar store variety SmartPods.

Her real fingers fed the bypass code into the dos mode of the Conchobar stream. 

A rainbow snake wreathed into existence on the blonde's left shoulder blade, unlooping and curling, emerging like a snake charmer's ward from a bamboo wicker. Its head stood upright, proud and fierce. It flicked its tongue a few times, then its eyes glowed ruby. Its pinge had been reciprocated by its complement. 

In seconds, an Italian footballer type, handsome, lean, with a long ponytail and sunglasses dangling at the collar appeared. A cobra swirled around his forearm, eyes fading crimson. He swept the blonde off her feet and in sauve motion, murmured sugary somethings in her ear. She blushed like a maiden and leaning on his arm, glided towards the back rooms, every door bedecked with a mistletoe. 

Autobooked, the third door with a tulip wreath opened as the two approached. The Italian closed the door swiftly with a sharp but low click and tapped on a button under his cuff. Immediately, the honeymoon furnishings in the loveroom switched to office decor. The Italian now looked like a v gen Marty McFly - at once more spunk and geek. 

Lena stood tall as a tattooed cross between Katniss and Trinity. Instead of a bow and sunglasses, she sported an eyepatch and a holster. Her current face had been constructed by scaling her physical coordinates differentially on the DopplegAngler. This made her look as different from her virtual looks as possible without losing her preferred holographic identity. 

Her business avatar DeviousRicki070.

"What's the urgency?" asked McFlyingHackY3K.

"Just wanted to get a headstart on a bait. Someone on the loose, being hunted, tracked down. On and off. Probably got a big bone, no idea what. Greens, gem, byte, could be anything. We don't know who's hunting, we don't know who sent the bait. Could be legit. What gives?"

"I'll tap the wires is all can be done this point. The dogs may or may not be barking. Do we know where they sniffed at yet?"

"Check your Orion. List incomplete." 

"How for?"

"Depends. It's indeterminable."

"Sorry. No deal."

"C'mon, Mac. I'm a regular." 

"Doesn't work that way. Upfront to roll's what the code says."

"Wha'bout 500 skid to start?"

"C'n work wi'that. If it's jake, your payoff booms."

"That's what I'm angling at. Rest is same?"

"Oi. Check Orion for next meet."

The next second, the room was back in it's honey-lovey trimmings with a red-robed blonde in the middle, all ecstatic. McFly hadn't bothered to fly back from his onion ring, the backdoor he had created into the Conchobar for this meet. The blonde walked out and past the service deck, flashing a languorous smile to the waiter, suggesting stories of her sumptuous deflowering.