Wyre-Rat (Pard 8)

I'd heard of the Center, but I'd never heard it called a Wyre Containment Facility before. This was something my team needed to know. Officially the Center was the headquarters of the team assigned to keep the streets safe from the dangerous wyre, an extension of the police force. In the last few years people had begun to wonder what it really was, since they hadn't found a live shapeshifter in close to fifteen years.

If its usefulness was done, it should have been disbanded by now.

I wandered back into my room and threw myself across my bed, sprawled out as if I was exhausted from the interview. Surreptitiously I pressed a button on the bedside clock, watched the little light in the corner blink at me.

They'd left some kind of monitor within 20 feet of the meter, and it was broadcasting.

I should now shoulder my bag and walk out to a well deserved vacation, but something they'd said bothered me. Escaped wyre.

Escaped.

Rolling over, I reached out and hit the snooze button. Extending the mission, that meant. They should have received the package last night so there should normally not be any reason for an extension. Some poor overworked secretary would be panicking, trying to decide how to get me home outside of the schedule.

I paced, trying to see it from every angle. It could very easily be a trap, if they suspected what I was. Or it could be the truth and my involvement was coincidental.

I don't trust coincidence.

I puttered around the room, packing up a few things as I would if I was ending my vacation. Most of my stuff could go home on the plane--I wouldn't miss it. A secondary route out had been prepared but with little thought that I'd ever need it.

Likely the escaped wyre would need it, if he or she was even real.

I hummed to myself, watched the blinking light that would tell me when the volume was the loudest.

End of the bed, in the fanciful carving of the bedpost. I identified the tiny thing, but pretended to ignore it. If someone wanted to listen to me, they could. I had nothing to hide now that my mission was done.

I pulled the toiletries from the bathroom, repacked them in the suitcase. According to the schedule I would be moving on to another hotel tonight, one far out in the country. I looked down to make sure the white dress hadn't wrinkled, and slipped out the door.


Part 9



If you want to start at the beginning: Wyre-Rat episode 1