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  “Mr. Angelo,” Jericho said in a measured tone as he entered the windowless room with Captain Sasaki’s blade in hand, “I’m here to enact the will of the people you’ve betrayed.”

  Angelo’s eyes were wide as saucers, and he shook his head so rapidly that his jowls jiggled comically. “B-b-betrayed?!” he blurted, his voice half-indignant and half-terrified. “I am no t-t-traitor,” he protested quickly, “you have the wrong man!”

  Jericho produced the Timent Electorum Mark, the insignia of his ‘office,’ such as it was, and placed it on the bed before tapping the iconic, all-seeing eye depicted at its center. This caused a meter-tall holographic image to appear, which was populated with images and statistics that Jericho and Baxter had gathered over the previous months. “Your signature is affixed to each of these orders,” Jericho explained, as he had done every other time the situation had allowed, “is it not?”

  Angelo’s fearful, rodent-like eyes flipped back and forth between Jericho and the holographic image before nodding.

  Jericho tapped the concealed button on the edge of the insignia, and the previous images were replaced with those of an industrial complex, and recognition dawned on Mr. Janus Angelo’s face. “This is the Five Peaks wind farm, correct?”

  “Now…wait just a minute,” Mr. Angelo began, but Jericho continued with his presentation despite the man’s protestations.

  “Four years ago, this facility was deemed hazardous to a strain of local wildlife,” Jericho pushed on, desiring nothing more than to be finished with his latest task. “That wildlife—a form of avian best known for circular patterns of pigmentation displayed on its feathers—was later proven to have been introduced to the area by acquaintances of yours no more than eighteen months prior to your office’s order to cease construction on this vital source of sustainable electricity. Is that correct?”

  Angelo began to protest as Jericho flipped to the next pair of images. The first was a low-tech, solar energy harvesting array while the second was a picture of Janus Angelo shaking the hand of a well-dressed executive, “I had no way of knowing—“

  “The Five Peaks wind farm failed to deliver its quotient of power on schedule as a result of your office’s corruption,” Jericho continued as though the other man had not even spoken. “This required a significant investment on the part of its backers, in order to complete the project without access to its original source funding. That investment,” he pressed on as a flood of statistics populated the screen, “forced the backers to consolidate their other holdings to raise the necessary capital, resulting in the closure of nearly a dozen of New Lincoln’s industrial entities. This has cost the city of New Lincoln nearly two billion credits worth of revenue—revenue which now flows into the coffers of this man, Hisashi Iwakuma, and his Tsushima-based industrial conglomerate.”

  Janus Angelo seemed to have found some much-needed steel for his spine, as he stood to his feet and leveled an accusing finger at the holographic image. “I cannot be held responsible for the economic repercussions of carrying out the charge of my office!” he cried indignantly.

  “Indeed…you cannot,” Jericho agreed before flipping to the last set of images, which were bank records showing literally hundreds of separate transactions. The transactions were highlighted one by one—each of them affixed with three, distinct Judicial Seals of Authenticity—and their totals were tallied in the lower corner of the screen while a new graphic showed a three dimensional version of the planet Virgin, which was quickly criss-crossed by an increasingly convoluted web of money transfers.

  The dazzling display went on for nearly twenty seconds, and each new line that sprang up indicated the origin of the monies which had been transferred to the accounts—accounts which were then shown to have been opened by acquaintances of Angelo’s. As the images streamed by, Janus Angelo wilted. Nearly thirty seconds after the graphic had begun its impressive, complex display, the source of the money was shown to have originated from Hisashi Iwakuma’s various Tsushima-based holdings.

  But even that would not have been enough to execute Mr. Angelo for his crimes against the body politic. The final nail in Angelo’s coffin was the fact that he had physically accepted a collection of rare earth minerals—minerals which were the real reason Jericho had accepted this particular Adjustment in the first place. The final image of the montage was of Angelo accepting the small pouch of minerals from Mr. Matsumoto—the same man Jericho had killed with the kitchen knife in the parlor.

  The projector then went dark, and Jericho allowed the silence to linger for several moments before taking a step forward. “You have grandchildren…yes?”

  Angelo, whose eyes were now misty as his hands moved to cover his mouth, nodded in resigned affirmation.

  “If you give me a name I can use, I’ll let you say goodbye to them before they learn the truth about their grandfather’s betrayal from the news feeds,” Jericho promised. He neither relished nor recoiled from this part of the job; it simply was what it was. Angelo had evidence which Jericho desperately needed, and he had little doubt Captain Sasaki and her chess-playing cohort had, in fact, been sent to kill Angelo before someone of Jericho’s ilk could reclaim said evidence. Like everything else in life, Jericho had been in a race against those who would deny him what he needed—and like every other race of his adult life, Jericho had won.

  “I…I…” he began as his lip began to quiver uncontrollably, and he nearly fell over when his legs threatened to give out but managed to lower himself onto the edge of the bed. He then began to sob uncontrollably.

  “One luxury I cannot provide you is time, Director Angelo,” Jericho said impatiently as he took another step forward. “Make your choice, and do so now.”

  Angelo looked up, and Jericho knew the man before him was already broken. So he relaxed his stance fractionally as he waited for the other man to give him what he had come for. “I…I only dealt with one man,” he explained tremulously.

  “That may not be good enough,” Jericho warned.

  Angelo nodded quickly and stood a bit too abruptly for Jericho, who closed the distance between them with a single, long stride and pressed the flat of the blade against the man’s throat. Angelo looked absolutely terrified as he audibly soiled himself, before pointing to the far wall—a wall which Baxter’s investigations had proven housed a cleverly-designed safe.

  Jericho drew the blade away from the man’s neck and took a half step back, ready to act at the first sign of betrayal. The truth was that Jericho had come to Angelo’s flat with two purposes in mind. The first was to make the Adjustment for the RL—Redeemed Lives, the metric by which an Adjuster’s career was gauged—which doing so would add to his record, and the second was to retrieve the contents within Angelo’s safe. Without the information Angelo had it may have been impossible to proceed with his future plans—and those plans were absolutely vital to the security of the planet, the System, and possibly even the entire Sector.

  Angelo slowly made his way to the wall before pressing his hands against seemingly random points on the wall. A soft, blue glow emanated from eye level before him, and he placed his face near the mundane-looking surface for several seconds before the panel in front of his face slid to the side and revealed a long, shallow recess which ran parallel to the surface of the wall.

  Jericho, careful to keep himself in position to react to the man’s potential treachery, stood at his shoulder and watched Angelo withdraw a slender data crystal. It was a rare form of data storage, and had fallen out of favor due to its incompatibility with recent quick-scanning technology. But it was durable and, once written, could not be overwritten or modified in any way short of physical destruction.

  Angelo turned and, in a somewhat surprising display of resolve, said, “I will give you the passcode if you don’t make my crimes public.”

  Jericho hesitated. He suspected that Wladimir could crack the encoding given enough time, but that would likely take weeks. There was, however, nothing explicitly
stating that an Adjuster was required to publicly produce the evidence which condemned one of the Timent Electorum’s Adjustments…

  Jericho nodded and held out his hand, “I can do that.”

  Angelo nodded, pointing to the now-opened safe. “The mineral bars are there; take them and do as you would with them.”

  Jericho narrowed his eyes. It was explicitly forbidden for an Adjuster to accept a material bribe in any form, and Angelo’s offer was clearly such a bribe.

  “You may dispose of them as you see fit,” the soon-to-be-former Director said hastily, “but they will provide a motive for my murder.”

  Jericho considered it and—though doing so was solidly in the dark grey zone of what was or wasn’t permissible—he nodded in agreement and gestured for him to withdraw the small pouch of material.

  When Angelo gave him the pouch, Jericho looked inside to see a small series of tiny, geometrically perfect, hexagonal rods in a clear, plastic case. Rare minerals were valuable, but these were likely untraceable and had already been meticulously crafted so as to be incorporated quickly into high-end electronic devices.

  He neither knew, nor cared to know, what purpose Angelo may have had for them. So he took them out of their plastic case and crushed them one by one, destroying their value in the process. When he was finished, the pouch was worth little more than its weight in industrial grade diamond, which was almost nothing—except in the hands of an examiner with equipment which could verify precisely where those minerals had come from.

  Jericho placed the pouch in the same pocket which had held his T.E. insignia and withdrew a small recording device, which he gave to Angelo. “Make it quick,” he urged, and the other man nodded as he wiped the tears from his face.

  A few minutes later, after composing himself, Angelo recorded a farewell letter to his grandchildren—whose names were Victoria and Michael—before finishing and handing the device back to Jericho, who watched the affair with more than casual interest. Jericho had never fathered children and, though his duty required him to rob those children of their grandfather’s presence, he knew that if he failed to carry out his charge he would be robbing thousands of others of the lives they might have otherwise made for themselves due to the corruption for which people like Angelo were responsible.

  “Thank you…” he said, and Jericho knew the man’s resolve would not hold for much longer, “the passcode is a simple alphanumeric composed of my birthdate followed by my grandmother’s maiden name, scrambled by the seventeen standard Virgin chronometers’ individual variances, measured to the twentieth decimal, prior to their collective weekly reset.”

  Jericho had no idea what any of that meant, but he had recorded the entire scene via his goggles’ video pickup and had confidence that Benton would know how to decipher it. “Are you ready?” he asked evenly.

  Angelo took a deep, measured breath and nodded as he closed his eyes. Jericho ended his life with a quick, precise stab through the brainstem that his mark never even heard coming.

  Captain Sasaki’s knife, while not a monomolecular blade, did the job better than any other implement Jericho had used in recent months and Director Angelo’s body fell to the ground in a silent heap. In the moment that he fell, Angelo looked for all the world like a puppet whose strings had been cut—and it was an all-too familiar sight to the experienced assassin.

  With his grizzly task complete, Jericho wiped the blade clean and produced a neatly-folded collar-to-toes overcoat which, when compressed, was no larger than his fist. He removed his goggles and hood before tucking them into his coat’s large pockets.

  After donning his new outfit, he exited the flat, made his way to the emergency escape which Baxter had indeed unlocked for him, and used it to disappear into the crowded streets of New Lincoln.

  Chapter VI: The Guardian Angel

  Not ten minutes after Jericho had left Angelo’s flat, an Okavango DOT (which initials stood for ‘Delivered On Time,’ the company’s infamous and much-lampooned slogun) Net delivery hover-drone appeared before him.

  “Hi, handsome! You have a delivery from,” the drone purred in an overly flirtatious voice as the image of a ridiculously sexualized schoolgirl ‘uniform’-wearing woman appeared on the two-dimensional display built into the meter-wide drone’s front. The screen flickered and the woman’s voice changed to that of Wladimir Benton, who snapped, “Bitch, you gotta learn to check yo’ damned mail!”

  Despite the crass language, Jericho was well-pleased to have received the package so promptly. He would normally have ignored the drone until it went away, but he had been expecting such a package and even without the overt greeting message he would have recognized this particular unit as a cleverly-designed fake of the global retail giant’s own delivery devices.

  This drone was one of Wladimir ‘AJ’ Benton’s…one might say ‘pets,’ and Jericho provided the requested signature by placing his hand into the cavity and gripping the contoured handle. Doing so provided a physical impression of his handprint while also providing other data, like body temperature, heart rate, oxygenation level in the blood, and God only knew what else.

  There was a loud, moaning sound from the drone’s speakers and the woman’s image flickered briefly before she bent over, exposing far more cleavage than Jericho believed to be biologically possible for a human woman to possess. “Thanks for the squeeze, handsome,” she said with a wink after licking her lips suggestively, “please…take anything you like.”

  Rolling his eyes in irritation, Jericho waited for the storage compartment to open and, when it did, he took a small briefcase from the drone. There was one other item inside, but he knew it had not yet reached its intended destination so he turned to continue down the sidewalk with the briefcase in hand.

  “Aww,” the drone pouted as the image of the woman folded her arms theatrically, “just like a man: gets what he wants and leaves without so much as a kind word.”

  Jericho couldn’t help himself from chuckling as he turned around and nodded. “Thank you, Eve,” he said with a tip of an imaginary cap. “Say ‘hello’ to the big guy for me.”

  Eve’s image seemed ready to burst with joy as the pupils of her eyes turned into little, pink Cupid hearts before the screen was filled with similar images. “Will do, babe. But seriously…we have got to stop meeting like this; people are going to talk. I have a reputation to consider!”

  Jericho shook his head in muted exasperation and made a ‘shoo’ gesture. “Get out of here before I report being sexually harassed by a delivery drone,” he urged with a hollow grin.

  “Mmm…baby,” she purred, her image leaning forward to expose her beyond-ample cleavage, “if I was sexually harassing you—“

  He held up a hand haltingly. “Another time, Eve,” he cut her off before tapping the briefcase and wincing when he moved his still-broken left arm in an inadvisable manner. “Work to do.”

  She pouted again before sighing as the drone began to drift up into the designated altitude for such devices to operate above when not making deliveries. “All work and no play…” she chided before turning around and flipping up her skirt, exposing even more pink hearts on—and around—what appeared to be Benton’s idea of a woman’s underwear. She winked, blew a kiss, and then disappeared from the screen as the drone sped off until it was once again out of sight.

  Jericho made his way down the street until finding a small café which was less than likely to have round-the-clock recorded surveillance. He sat down, took out a few chits and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich before opening the case and examining its contents.

  Inside was the usual assortment of material necessary for a Guardian Angel operation, including new identification, untraceable credit chits of sufficient value to book passage off-world, and a link pad similar to the one he had destroyed after executing the Cantwell Adjustment. He activated the link and input his usual passkey, which was accepted, and found himself looking at multiple video feeds of a low-rent apartment complex which
made Mr. Angelo’s residential building look like a getaway resort built for the Old Nobility.

  The individual unit floor plans were no more than six feet by twelve feet with ceilings of varying heights. The extra headroom required to go from a four foot ceiling to a six foot one—which would have still been too short for Jericho to stand to his full height—increased the cost of the unit by fifty percent since the rental price was based almost entirely on displaced volume of the unit itself.

  It was one of the things Jericho had come to despise about the Imperium’s obsession with cramming as many people as possible into as small of an area as possible, but he had made his peace with such incomprehensible realities many years earlier. If that was how people wished to live, he would no longer argue with them.

  He scanned his way through the various feeds. Most of them appeared to have been hijacked directly from the building’s own internal security system, but three of the feeds were marked with icons indicating they were being delivered via off-grid, wireless bugs. The interesting thing was that those three feeds had not been placed by Wladimir, as would have been normal for a Guardian Angel operation—he had apparently discovered that their next ‘target’ was already under covert surveillance.

  AJ had apparently intercepted those feeds without making anyone the wiser. He was, in all likelihood, the foremost hacker in the Virgin System with only Jericho’s immediate superior in the T.E. serving as a competitor for the title. Benton had evaded capture for nearly two decades of wreaking continuous mayhem, so at this point in his life Jericho put nothing past the man. The mayhem Benton wrought was something which Jericho had come to depend upon during his mid-life career choice as a T.E. Adjuster, and though he had absolutely no idea how his top operator did what he did, he was grateful they were on the same side—despite the other man’s unusual, and often insulting, verbiage.

  A flashing red circle appeared on one of the external video feeds and Jericho expanded that particular window while setting the female target to track mode in the pad’s software. As she moved from one camera’s zone of sight to another, the feed morphed using a digitally-rendered, three-dimensional ‘panning’ effect which made it seem as though there was actually just one camera and it was following her specifically.