Looking Out The Window
ME
Southwest Flight 1706. It was early in the morning and he watched the
sun warm the wilderness below. Scanning the burnt orange outline of
Appalachia he concentrated, looking for landmarks. "Somewhere down
there" he thought "is X-Ville."
His eyes moved from the window, it was no use, he couldn't make out
the town.
X-Ville had been the final adventure for this shadowy sophisticate.
Zane's memory of x-ville was obstructed, time is not kind to the
memory of aging spies. People and places blur in the mind's eye, old
grudges and alliances are forgotten. Now, thirteen years later, Zane
was bored, broke, and alone. Zane's butler Watts had moved back to
London never to be heard from again.
After X-Ville, Zane noticed the world had changed. Espionage had
changed. There were new tools and techniques. Survailance was done
from space instead of street corners. There was no place in the new
age for antiquated tradecraft. Threats had become more anonymous and
deadly. Spying was no longer a gentlemen's game. It was a street
fight with an enemy made of fog.
Zane hadn't thought of X-Ville for a long time. Quietly sipping his
ginger ale he wondered where all the residents were now. Had they
moved on?
Are they still out there?
Galen/Mortis/_ronin1_
The Castle mainframe tracked all flights over and around the town,
scanning each of them for possible threats and determining if action
needed to be taken. It also cross checked passenger manifests
looking for known terrorist groups and spies from "not so friendly"
countries.
Southwest Flight 1706 was no exception. The computer ran all
available data of persons known on the flight, cross checked aliases,
and even viewed pictures of faces according t io IDs on file.
It stopped on one picture and began transmitting data to Galen.
If any action needed to be taken then Galen would authorize it.