Location:Seven Peaks — Gate, Eastern Terrace
Date/Time:TC1856.05.17 (Dawn)
They left at dawn. Different directions. Different missions. The same war.
***
Coop packed light. Formation-sealed case for the lattice recording equipment. A change of clothes that looked like something a mid-level bureaucrat would wear — grey, forgettable, the kind of fabric that made people's eyes slide past without registering. Identity papers that Thorne's network had produced with the craftsmanship of someone who understood that the best forgeries weren't the ones that looked perfect but the ones that looked exactly imperfect enough to be real.
"Aldric Wen," he read from the papers. "Provincial assessor, Third Administrative District. Arriving for quarterly infrastructure review."
"Boring enough to be invisible," Thorne said. "Nobody questions a provincial assessor. They avoid them."
