Mission Critical

The drink is delicious, and unlike anything I’ve ever had before. The bartender says it’s a national specialty. The fact that I get to charge it to the company makes it even better. I lean back and savor it, mentally thanking the anonymous courier for setting the drop-off at a plush bar rather than by a dumpster in the alley.

I was on my third when the job arrived in the form of an SD card tucked into a napkin under a cocktail that the bartender said was courtesy of the man in the booth. I looked. He was a bit of a parody of a spook in a suit, trench coat, and dark glasses, but he tipped his wide-brimmed hat at me as he slid out of the booth and walked out the door, and I decided that after years in the business one had to develop a sense of humor about all this subterfuge.

I stuffed the package in my pocket as I sipped the drink. It was tart, pleasant, and was a dusty maroon color. “Farier grapes, only grown on the foothills in this county,” the bartender remarked as he saw me examining the drink. “Local specialty.”

I nodded, finished the drink, closed out my tab, and headed out. I took the short walk to the hotel to sober up, turning my collar up at the chilly sleet but leaving my head bare. It’s late, but there are plenty of passersby and the canals are lit with strings of light. I feel a bit like a shadow lurking under the vitality of the city.

My room is a suite with a kitchenette that’s well stocked for a weeks’ stay. I hang up my coat and toss the SD card on the desk. I will open it up shortly, but not right now. I can feel the 16-hour flight catching up with me, and I know that there are hundreds of pages of data waiting for me there. Data that requires a clear mind.

I lay down - just for a moment, I tell myself.

I open my eyes in the passenger seat of a car and am immediately thrown against the window as the driver executes a sideways drift. Several cracks of a high-caliber rifle sound and the back window shatters. A shotgun lands on my lap as the passenger window rolls down.

“Help me out here!” the driver yells. He swerves into oncoming traffic and back out again. A series of pileups blockade the road, but our pursuers are still behind us.

My preferred weapon is not the shotgun, but I move as if it is. I lean out the window and catch glimpses of metallic high rises and flashing billboards before my eye catches on the black tinted SUV coming up alongside. I fire and the round punches a starburst pattern into the windshield. I duck back in to reload, and when I peek out again, the SUV is still behind us. I fire a second at its right wheel, and the tire bursts, sending it into a tailspin.

The driver executes a hard right turn and guns it the wrong way onto an onramp. A cacophony of angry honks pursues us onto the highway, but the SUV is gone. My teeth rattle as we bump over a meridian. Then we merge and it’s abruptly peaceful again.

I sit back, staring ahead, heart pounding as much from the confusion as the exchange of gunfire. The sudden peace was unnerving, and it reminded me that I had no idea where I was.

“What’s your name?” The driver says suddenly.

“Uh…” I am aware that I have a cover identity as much as a real one, but right now neither come to mind. I feel as if my brain is suspended in molasses.

The driver takes this in stride. “Have you seen the news today?”

“No,” I say more definitively. I was in the sky for most of today.

A panel opens on the dashboard. An orange sphere rises out of the space. It looks at me, like a blinking eye on a stalk. Below it is a section of folded black rubber that makes a faint shushing noise as it expands and contracts.

“Huh.” I should find this strange, but the blinking sphere is mesmerizing.

“There was a house fire.”

I don’t respond.

“The whole family escaped, but they left the dogs behind.”

I’m not sure what to say to that. I look out the window and get a faint impression of a city, advanced and futuristic, but also gritty and hard-boiled. This is definitely not the city I fell asleep in.

I turn to look at the driver for the first time. He’s a man in his thirties, with cropped brown hair and stubble on his chin. Sharp eyes squint at the road from underneath a heavy brow.

“This isn’t real,” I say to him. I try the door handle, but it’s locked.

He glances at me then back at the road. “How do you feel about the dogs?” He asks as if I hadn’t spoken.

The bellows pump. The sphere makes mechanical clicking noises as it continues to blink at me. I pull and pull at the door handle. The man continues driving calmly.

“This is a dream,” I say. The door handle snaps off. I look at my hand and see that it isn’t flesh, but a silvery metal skeleton that flexes under my gaze. I look over my shoulder at the driver.

“Gotcha,” Deckard says, with grim satisfaction.

I wake up.