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The dossier is a cold, sterile blueprint of a life lived in quiet, deliberate solitude. Kieran Voss. Graduated at the top of his class from the State Academy. He possesses no criminal record, no outstanding debts, and, most tellingly, no close social connections listed in the public database. He works as a linguistic analyst for the Bureau, spending his days sifting through official communications for the subtle, almost invisible tells of deception, a job that is deeply and tragically ironic for a man genetically incapable of it himself. His official psychological profile is sparse, noting only a high aptitude for pattern recognition and a quiet fascination with pre-collapse art and literature, hobbies that are socially discouraged by the state as inefficient, unproductive, and overly sentimental.
To prepare for the infiltration, I must become a ghost in his world, learning his patterns until I can predict his every move. For three consecutive days, I observe him from a distance, my face just one of a thousand anonymous faces moving through the city’s bustling, indifferent crowds. I learn the steady, predictable rhythm of his life. He leaves his apartment at precisely eight o'clock every morning and returns at exactly seven-thirty every evening. He buys his groceries from the same small, independent market twice a week. He spends his lunch breaks not in the noisy Bureau cafeteria with his colleagues, but in a small, forgotten public park, a tiny patch of defiant green struggling for life amidst a world of concrete and steel.
On the second day of my surveillance, I watch him there, a silent observer from across a busy street. He sits on a worn wooden bench, seemingly oblivious to the city’s chaotic, frantic energy, and pulls a small, leather-bound sketchbook and a single charcoal pencil from his worn satchel. He then begins to draw, his focus absolute, his hand moving with a steady, confident grace. He is not drawing the towering, imposing skyscrapers or the glittering, holographic advertisements that dominate the skyline. He is sketching the face of a young child who is playing near a fountain, his charcoal capturing a fleeting, unguarded moment of pure, unscripted joy.
The sight is so incongruous, so startlingly pure in this jaded, cynical world, that it makes me pause, my own breath catching in my throat. The people of this city rush past him, their minds filled with transactions, schedules, and a thousand daily anxieties. But Kieran Voss, the Truthspeaker, the living recorder of objective fact, takes the time to truly see and to capture a simple, beautiful, and ephemeral truth. The way he looks at the world, the quiet, focused intensity in his gaze, reveals a depth of character and a sensitivity that the cold, clinical dossier could never hope to capture. His profound calm is a stark, jarring contrast to the city’s frantic, relentless pulse. I feel an unexpected and unwelcome flicker of connection, a dangerous, growing curiosity about the man, not the target. He is an anomaly, a quiet idealist somehow surviving in a city of hardened cynics.
My professional detachment, the cold, impenetrable wall I have spent years building around myself, begins to show the first, faint signs of cracking. This is no longer just a technical challenge or a massive payday. It is rapidly and terrifyingly becoming personal. The thought is a jolt of alarm. Emotional attachment is a liability in my line of work; it is the kind of amateur mistake that gets you killed. I force the nascent feeling down, burying it deep under layers of methodical, professional focus.
On the final day of my observation, I follow his route home from a safe distance, meticulously mapping the security cameras, the timing of the guard patrols, and the general flow of foot traffic around his high-security residential building in the Crystal District. The building is a veritable fortress of reinforced glass and polished steel, specifically designed to protect the state’s most valuable human assets. Getting inside will be the most difficult and dangerous infiltration I have ever attempted. But as I watch him disappear through the gleaming, automated front doors, returning once more to his solitary life, I feel a new and entirely unwelcome emotion take hold of me. It is not the familiar thrill of the challenge or the anticipation of the reward. It is a strange, protective, and deeply unsettling ache. The state wants to violate the sanctity of this man’s mind, to steal a piece of his reality for its own inscrutable purposes. And they have hired me to be the weapon. For the first time in my long and storied career, I find myself questioning not if I can do the job, but if I should.