The thing about surveillance was ninety-nine percent of the time it was boring as absolute fuck. Sift through chat logs, both public and private; make sure there isn’t any talk of sedition. You pinned the occasional flag on a conversation and passed it along to the Seekers for them to follow-up. Even those ones didn’t always amount to anything – in fact most of the time they didn’t.
That’s why Summer hated this fucking job. Sitting behind a desk in the IT department wasn’t exactly a stimulating line of work. She’d been a damn good combat operative at one point. It was her own fault she was still where she was. After Matt was born and she recovered, returning to the field should have been a piece a cake and obvious. Zenith didn’t seem in a hurry to move her. She knew what he wanted – what they both wanted. How she’d let him convince her that getting to Imperial would be easier at a desk was beyond her current understanding. He’d made a good argument at the time, she supposed.
Yeah, ninety-nine percent of the time she was sure her job could have been performed by a brain-dead monkey.
It was that one percent that really got your attention and your heart pounding. Summer caught something, or the flash of something. There was a subroutine that shouldn’t be there, encrypted messages flying by and then disappearing in ways they definitely shouldn’t.
Just as she began to trace that fleeting signal, a small alert appeared on the second monitor.
“Goddamn those motherfucking, pond algae sucking, bottom feeding assholes.” The words came out in a low growl as she turned to look at the error message. A surveillance camera in the lower levels had gone out. Again. It was the thirteenth time in a month. The area was known for gang activity. She had already filed a report on this! Apparently the military boys and police were too stupid and incompetent to up the patrols as requested. If they had done it, then those fucking gang cunts wouldn’t be knocking out her camera over and over again!
There was nothing else for it. Summer pushed out of her chair and snatched up her bag, heading quickly out of the Citadel. The trip down that far was always shady at best. Rails that moved into the belly of the city weren’t nearly as clean and nice as the ones she would have ridden to another city. Not that it mattered; nobody bothered her as she stewed in silence, a cloud of smoke rising off the cigarette hanging precariously from between her lips.
This was a bullshit job in a bullshit part of Haviah.
Honestly, Summer was of a notion that they should just purge the lower levels. They had the stupidest, lowest form of Aedolian waste down here. If they wanted to let gangs run rampant in their section, then they could all burn with the criminals for all she cared.
It was night, but it was hard to tell the difference between night and day this far down. Nobody else walked the streets, but Summer strode confidently down them beneath the flickering street lights. What did a Pilot have to fear even here? Who would be stupid enough to even attempt to touch one? She didn’t think to even check her surroundings properly.
That had always been Summer too greatest weaknesses, her arrogance and her temper. All she could think about was fixing that stupid fucking camera and about how incompetent everyone else was.
It was why she didn’t notice the figure stalking her silently from the shadows.
Reaching the pole the busted camera was mounted on, she dropped her bag, which held the equipment she’d need to repair it. She stood there, scowling up at the non-functioning camera as she puffed angrily on her fourth cigarette since leaving the office.
Honestly, she barely even registered the sound of a gunshot before everything went completely dark and silent. Summer faded to nothing as the bond with Zenith snapped. She couldn’t hear her dragon’s anguished cries of rage as her body fell unceremoniously to the pavement, but the rest of Haviah undoubtedly could. The Citadel probably shook with his roars.
