Alyce accepts Mister Guthrie's arm and allows herself to be escorted out of the warehouse to the street. The difference in heat is palpable. It had been bad enough inside the building, but out in the sun it was much worse, as the humidity tried to suck the life from her. Kang strides to the street and lifts a hand to summon one of the pedicabs and proceeds to crowd all three into one, allowing Alyce to sit in the center. Kang's breath smells heavily of onions and peppers and something even Alyce's enhanced olfactory sensors can not identify. The short ride to the hotel is silent except for the noise from the street. The hotel was certainly less than the slick brochure had advertised, but Alyce truly had expected nothing more than what they got. Checking in was perfunctory and handled by Kang. Alyce and Al were give a metal key (who really uses metal keys anymore?) to adjoining rooms on the second floor.
The old woman behind the counter listlessly informs them that each room has a sink and fan, and that the communal bathroom was at the end of the hall. She then points to a small sign that clearly stated in several languages that the time for hot water on the second floor was between 0400 and 0500 local and that towels were provided, but not robes. Another sign notes that the only meal served in the dining room was dinner and that between 1800 and 2000 local. After checking his charges in, Kang departs to return to the warehouse. Mister Guthrie turns to Alyce and introduces himself with a flourish. Alyce giggles a bit and curtsies. "You already know my name, Mister Guthrie. You may call me Alyce and may I call you Al? Or is Aloucious preferable? It appears that we are on our own for dinner. Do you intend to dine here or do you have other plans?" After determining that he is planning on eating in the dining room, she sets a time to meet outside the rooms at 1730. She offers her arm for Al to escort her up the stairs to the second floor.
Alyce thanks him and moves to the door to her room, where she feels for the lock and slips the physical (again, who the frag uses physical keys any more) key into the cheap-ass lock and opens the door to an equally cheap-ass room. She smiles as she remembers Kang’s offer to take her bag upstairs. Even blind, it had been easy for her to tell from the changes in his breathing that the large man would like to be invited up for something more than a social visit. She had politely refused the offer, clearly disappointing the man. Entering the room, she places the pack on the floor at her feet and carefully “looks” about the small room. She stands against the closed door and reaches out with her senses in an almost mystic manner to probe the room. The bed gives off an odor of being used and the aroma of alcohol and sex strongly imply that the cheap linens are probably not very clean and that certainly the mattress is not. A smell of camphor emanates from the small bureau and water drips from the area of the sink. Satisfied that her normal senses have a good picture of the room, she turns her radar on to “see” where everything is. Smiling, she walks around the small room. A tiny bed sits under a window. Alyce runs her hand along the glass and feels the partially missing pane that allows a modicum of a breeze into the room. If there was a modicum of a breeze, that is. She feels the sunlight through the window and does not need her enhanced touch to feel the thick layers of grime that dim it. A sink stands against one wall, the faucet dripping. She walks to it and twists the knob, already fairly certain that she will not be able to turn it off. She is correct. The rest of the furniture consists of a rickety rattan chair of dubious strength and a very small table near the bed, the purpose of which is a mystery since it does not appear either large or sturdy enough to hold anything. A coffin-sized closet opens from one wall but the cross pole is missing, leaving several metal coat hangers on the floor. Sighing, she returns to the bed. She has lived in worse places during her years working for one AA or AAA Corporation or crime syndicate or another and will survive this.
Alyce sits on the bed, noting the thin mattress and thinner blanket and wonders at the need for a blanket at all in this oppressive humidity. Perhaps they just do not change things out during the rainy season, when a blanket is probably needed at night. Swinging her legs onto the bed, she reclines and considers the companions she has met so far. Ling Tse Tau is a right bastard. When they met, she could almost feel his eyes trying to see through her blouse and he had somehow managed to let a hand brush against her ass. Something about him reminds her of someone else…………yes……….Gordon Pinkney. Now, he had been a true example of evil incarnate and had well deserved his rather gruesome end. Yao Lung easily fits the description of corporate minder for the young man and should be able to keep him in check. She remembers the large from that trip to the Amazon a few years back. He had impressed her then with his efficiency and drive to make even the most broken mission work. Kang and the other two men were obvious muscle and fit the mold well. Kang had already tried to get his hand on her but Yao Lung had set him in his place. Al Guthrie, now, is a bit different from the normal fish she has worked with on similar jobs. There was always a guide and they were always rough and without manners. This man could be different. He smells of booze and fags, but he seems nice enough and he knows how to pile on the charm. Time will tell.
Sighing again, she chides herself for being lazy and gets to work. She first sets Viktor, her commlink agent, to searching the internet for any public information on one Al Guthrie. Next, she fires up her Sony CIY-720 and lets her mental fingers play across the cybered keys. The agent on this device is Misha and, while just as effective as Viktor, he has much more firepower at his control. Alyce sets him to tracking down all the matrix icons in the immediate area, starting with Al’s room next door. Then, before dropping out of the meat world, she activates two miniature Fly-Spy drones, setting them on silent and instructing Ivan to keep watch over her room while sending Sasha through the crack under the door to keep watch in the hallway. Satisfied that her boys are all doing their thing, she slips into full VR and jumps into the world of the matrix. This is her real home and she feels powerful here. Here she does not need artificial sensory enhancements to “see”. Her virtual “ears” are assaulted by the noise inherent to the public grid, but she has come prepared with authorizations for her presence on the Phnom Penh local grid as well as the Cambodian national grid. She blithely shows the virtual equivalent of a pass to a silent guardian and steps across the line to the relative quiet of the Phnom Penh grid.
Her avatar smiles sweetly at the grid guardian and whisks away to the city center. She is only interested in a tour of the city and its hosts on this trip. Even in the midst of near anarchy, she finds a large number of hosts and stores advertising their wares. An unsurprising number of them advertise sex for sale, almost one in every three hosts is a bordello of some sort, some slick and modern, but most are simply bare bones operations. Virtual doormen wave to her, inviting her in to view women with enticing names such as “Sugar Delight” and “Hanging Fruit”. She is actually tempted to just look in on one of the better looking brothels, but pulls herself away before entering. She promises herself a real visit in the near future and takes several of the virtual brochures offered, filing them away in her cyber memory.
Eventually, her city tour complete, she considers hopping to the national grid for some exploration in the capital building, but decides against it, reminding herself that she is not ready to go that route just yet. She mentally sighs and pulls herself back to her meat body, going first to AR then slipping completely back to the world of those that cannot experience the real life of the trix. She checks her agents and smiles as she notes there is very little information on Al Guthrie, which is not surprising for someone she suspects of being SINless. She almost misses the small note on the information and has to do a double take. She murmurs to herself, “How interesting. And why, Mister Alouicious Harlan Guthrie, is someone interested enough in you to implant a stealth tag? Good work, Viktor.” She switches to her other agent, asking Misha to relay all of the matrix icons in the near vicinity. The space in the next room is completely barren of icons. She turns her head in the direction of the next room and allows her radar to penetrate the thin walls, exposing the shape of a man approximately the height and size of Al in the act of what she concludes is either putting clothes on or taking them off. Satisfied that the man is in the room, she turns the radar off and goes to her deck to scan for silent and stealthed icons, narrowing the search to the immediate vicinity.
Her search comes back with several pings. One on the person in the next room and one cleverly placed in the small fan ineffectually attempting to churn the dead air in her room and in each room near hers. She carefully sleazes a mark first on the one in her room then the one in Al’s room, determining that they are cleverly disguised sensors, almost certainly containing cameras to record any activity that might be worthy of blackmail. Although well designed and hidden, the devices are easily marked and can be destroyed………………….or perhaps even used in a more interesting role. She will give that some thought. But it is the other device that concerns her more. After carefully sleazing a mark on the tag, she determines that it is apparently a simple stealth tag, but it carries a signature she is not familiar with. This again raises the question of why someone would be interested in Mister Al Guthrie, and does it have anything to do with Ling Tse Tau or her current job? This may take some finesse and thought. She carefully pulls back from the tag and erases her mark, confident that she left nothing of herself on the device. Staying on her back, she looks at the ceiling and considers her options.