Chapter 1: The Agent
<<STATIC>><<FLASH>>
She crouched silently in the shadows, carefully hidden in a small room off a mostly disused side corridor. Somewhere dark and silent. With a thought, a glowing, blue-lined map flickered to life in front of her, projected directly into her brain’s optic processors. She surveyed the schematic, first locating her position and then her target. It was close
The map flickered away with another thought, replaced by her command menu. She selected one of the items, watching it grow a brighter blue than the rest. Then she waited, timing it for the perfect moment to trigger the command–the moment when the nearby security guards were positioned so the program could achieve the most optimum impact. Their precise locations were fed to her through passive sensors, measuring everything from nearby temperature differentials and air movement to tiny vibrations in the floor and walls around her
Ten seconds.
Three seconds.
Execute.
The local power grid abruptly suffered a severe malfunction, plunging the area into total darkness. She stood up from her crouched position and moved through the nearby door into the corridor. She was a shadow in the dark.
<<STATIC>><<FLASH>>
She flicked a gloved finger, scrolling through the menus that swam across the holographic display like a school of neon fish, finally landing on the one she was looking for. She selected the command to load the data to local memory, pulled a slim data crystal from a small pouch on her belt, and stuck it into the waiting port. A tiny yellow light flashed above the port, indicating a connection to the console, and a new icon appeared on the display screen. She herded the mass of data on the screen toward that icon with a small gesture, starting the transfer to the data crystal.
An alert popped up in her vision. Her sensors had detected signs of movement outside in the corridor. She glanced down at the prone figure of the station guard that lay crumpled at her feet. She’d disabled them before they could raise any alarm, swiftly snapping their neck with a sickening crunch. She knew that her combat suit’s stealth field shielded her from any station scans, so either she was about to be visited by a guard on their regular patrol route, or her subversion of the station systems had somehow triggered a silent alarm. It caused her no concern. Based on the floor vibrations picked up by her passive sensors, she estimated that she had another twenty seconds before being discovered. That was fine. She only needed ten.
This was page one of Into the Lightning Gate, a queer, sci-fi, action thriller available in paperback and for e-readers at Amazon. Get your copy now!