Nine Swords

*A woman in a long white coat with short-wavy platinum hair and violet eyes enters a telephone box outside Ealdwic Park and dials to a GCHQ contractor in Scarborough.*

"Olie? It's Alex. I'm calling in that mark you owe me for sorting out the mess you made in Angoor Adda. Yes, that's right. Double what you got last time, plus the mark is clear. You know the agency I work for, Scorpion? We have a retrieval for an executive protection client that was kidnapped. Intel suggests the client is being held in an old soviet Red Hand facility in the Urals. We need current satellite images and any plans, schematics, reports, or other data you can get on these facilities double-quick, and has to be entirely off the books. We can't tip our friends to the surprise party. Leave it in the Tilshead village dead-drop. Bunce will be in your locker at the cricket club. Thanks mate."

*Hanging up the phone, the woman steps out of the box and strides briskly down the lane.*

*At 04:00 two scenes play out simultaneously: A fit middle-aged man with a sandy blond crew cut in cross trainers and a track suit jogs to a water fountain in in Tilshead seemingly doing nothing more than innocently taking a drink while discretely attaching a small item. At the same time a woman in a black jumpsuit and ballcap slides a large gym bag into a locker at a cricket club in Hertfordshire. At 04:30 the two figures have switched scenes, the woman, now dressed in running shorts and a sports bra stops at the fountain for a drink, palming a small item, and the man returns to the locker room from his shower, dressing in casual clothes and leaving with a large heavy gym bag. By 05:30, the woman is back at her flat in Shoreditch decrypting the files from the micro SD card and reviewing the materials on her rugged laptop.*

"Here we are, the current sat, a local topo map, and some on site photos of the entrance to the Red Hand facility. Let's see, lots of soldiers, a few golems, hedge magicians, anima readings off the chart, and something they call anti-anima. Hope this is enough to get the rest of the crew off their collective arses and do something about this bloody op."











*After studying the materials closely, she takes care to scrub the decrypted files from her laptop, loads a burner phone with the decryption app, but keeps the micro SD secreted away elsewhere on her person before heading back to Ealdwic.*