Shit. Shit. Shitshitshit!
As Cindy slunk through the entrance of Minorafides, Inc, she was not sure what was more humiliating: her tattered dress, bloody knuckles (not her own blood, now that would be embarrassing), and bare feet, or the fact that no one noticed. At least today’s instance of the soul-crushing anonymity in the insurance call-center was working to her advantage for a change. She grabbed her go-bag from her locker and wordlessly eased into a toilet stall, because of course there was not a shower on the premises.
As she worked her way through her God-knew-howmanyeth wet-wipe bath, she recapped in her mind the many ways in which the mission had gone Charlie Foxtrot. Cindy had a sinking feeling that somewhere between obtaining the hair sample and losing the second shoe, she had also surrendered the moral high ground. Instead of her dressing down Blue for a faulty intel report on the Prince’s elaborate security apparatus, Cindy might be the one getting an earful from the GDMTHR minder about her poor spycraft.
As she emerged from the stall, she came face-to-photons with her reflection. Without the makeup, wig, and disguising contacts, the green-golden eyes stood out as her most striking feature. She was looking at a face that straddled the line between cuteness and beauty without being unduly memorable (Blue 101: memorable = bad craft). It was angular but stopped short of being too lean, and was framed by brown hair whose short bob and bangs managed to add a touch of pizazz to a haircut with the main stylistic requirement that it not get in the goddam way. Besides, she had learned the hard way that, while it might suit her face well, in her line of work, a pixie cut could be interpreted as a political statement.
But the eyes were the thing. Cindy had better-than-perfect vision, but she continually wore colored contacts to avoid the eyes giving her away. As Cindy paused to...well...reflect, she thought those eyes might just beginning to seem as if they had seen a bit too much.
Screw it. Probably just the lack of sleep.
The contents of the go-bag had, to say the least, not been optimized for fashion. An old Rolling Stones concert T-shirt and jeans (that still fit great. Take that, crappy banquet food) revealed a dancer’s length of limb but with more like a fighter’s tone. All that (mostly) clean living and kettlebells, she thought, with no small pride of ownership.
“And a touch of elfin magic,” she heard in Sir Jim’s voice.
Goddammit! She didn’t know exactly how he did that, but she sure-as-shit hated when it happened. She didn’t think he was actually in her head, but the occasional intrusive thought was still unnerving. Jim had explained that it was a holdover effect from his mentorship of her fairie gifts. “You know the Fey give no gifts.”
ARRRGH. If she was going to be keeping herself honest, she really would prefer the conscience to be in her own voice.
At least she had packed replacement footwear, some old black Converse low-tops. Even at Minorafides, someone would eventually notice bare feet. Cindy looked past the shoes to the elven cloak that was barely visible in the bottom corner. It was much smaller as a bundle than one would imagine after seeing it unfurled, but even wadded in the bottom of a gym bag, Sir Jim’s gift still retained its ability to blend in. If she hadn’t known it was there, she would have certainly missed it.
As she stared at the cloak, a plan began to form. She might not know where the shoes were now, but she remembered where she’d lost at least one of them. And recovering one shoe might go some way toward balancing the scales with Blue. It’ll be a stakeout, then.
But not today. Today, she had to make quota.
As Cindy exited and headed toward her cubicle, she used more than a touch of her craft to move both swiftly and silently. Just as her hand reached for the knob, the nasal tones of Hannah Ann sang out.
“Late again, Orilla!”
HOW did she do that? In almost every other communication with her boss, Cindy was a faceless, ignored cipher. From the way Hannah Ann thought nothing of microwaving fish at the office, one would think her scent-blind. Yet it seemed like she could literally smell an opportunity for humiliation.
“Breakroom’s dirty!”
It seemed like there was some implied suggestion in this declaration. Something to the effect that had Cindy not been late, then the entire section (breaking with tradition) would not have put their unwashed dishes in the sink expecting her to clean them. Frankly, even having someone ask her to do the cleaning would be a step in the right direction. An actual “thank you” might be more shock than even her enhanced heart could take. As it was, the varieties of not-thank-you that Cindy had received ranged from “(sheepish silence)” to “About time, Cindy.” “Breakroom’s dirty” didn’t crack the 10 Rudest List.
As she washed bad choices off of other people’s plates, she (again) questioned the necessity of this cover. Sure, humility was good (in theory), but she figured she had picked up plenty of that before even joining the Guardians. Perhaps an occasional reflection on her poverty-stricken near-starvation as a youth would do her some good. But day-in and day-out being treated like someone’s servant was taxing.
Cindy suspected Blue could easily have gotten her a better cover job. As one of the senior GDMTHR agents, she undoubtedly had the pull, and Cindy had guarded the Mother Realm faithfully (“mostly...”) (Stuff it, Jim) for years now. No, Cindy was stuck at Minorafides because that was exactly where Blue wanted her to be stuck.
The breakroom was soon clean enough to mollify the savages who worked there, and Cindy knew she should get away before the second-breakfast crowd showed up and undid her efforts. She exited and moved toward her cube so quickly that Blue would have tut-tutted about risking her cover. But Cindy, having performed her menial task, had returned to the “ignored to the point of effectively invisible” status that was her default at work. In a blink, she was in.
The one (and really, the only) perk at MF was a soundproof room with a door. In theory, it was so that the tortured souls who worked there would not distract one another while on-duty. They required the full use of their faculties as they interrupted family meals and children’s naps with amazing-but-unsolicited deals on term/whole-hybrid life insurance policies financed by reverse mortgages and health deductible plus-ups. For Cindy, it just meant that she finally got some goddamn privacy.
And that privacy was what she needed now to reconstruct the evening’s events and plan her next steps. She would make an occasional call, but at least GDMTHR made one concession to productivity; Blue had charmed the lines. Cindy had no idea of the specific magiks involved, but every number she hand-dialed was routed to a person who actually stood to benefit from the MF product and wanted to take the call. When she was not on a call, the enchantment made pretend calls to dummy numbers, keeping Cindy’s success rate at just the level of perineal Employee of the Month second runner-up.
Cindy set the phone to auto and then fished in her bag for the mission cube. “Perhaps,'' she admitted, “a more thorough review of the brief wouldn’t hurt.” She hit “play” and propped her feet up as Blue’s familiar holo took shape.
***