Hard rain lashes down onto the pavement, deepening the etched paths where runoff pools and seeps into the gutters at the edges of the slowly dissolving road surfaces. The sound of sirens howl far-off in the night, lost and searching but never satisfied amid the background roar of traffic. Scrolling walls of neon coat the sides of the skyscrapers that wall the roads up to the heavens, shedding the acid rain as they pour their advertising glow into the night. Citizens scurry beneath arched corroded polyplas sidewalk shields, treated umbrellas hoisted to ward off the acrid spatters and the rising steam from pavement vents shrouding their ankles in mist.
Chinese characters spill onto the pavement in twisting patterns of light, backlit from the scrolling signs that beckon and entice shoppers into the corporate webs of consumption and avarice. Come inside, come buy, come buy. The poor eat from noodle carts and vans tucked into alleyways, the rich sip tea and eat dim-sum in the chrome palaces of the wealthy.
At the foot of a towering block of steel and glass, sleek vehicles pull up and drop off their high-rolling precious cargo. Elegantly suited men and ravishingly dressed women saunter up the red carpet, through the uniformed ranks of white-gloved attendants, towards the gaping glass doors that suck them inside the lavishly decorated atrium of the massive building. Decked out in red silk for luck, with massive drapes and plush settles, brass-sheathed columns and great bronze statues of the gods of luck and chance, the casino-hotel lobby is filled with the wealthy and indulgent.
A couple passes through the main doors, walking arm in arm. He's medium height, genial, rotund, and wrapped up in an expensive suit that makes him look as slim as possible under the circumstances. The woman on his arm is far from mere eye-candy, hard-eyed and calculating in an elegant but hardly seductive dress. The bellboys bow in sequence as they move up the carpet, stopping in front of the circular central desk beneath the ten-storey atrium's apex, directly beneath the massive crystal globe chandelier hanging on its wrist-thick chain.
"122. Execute. 123. Execute." The voices are robbed of all emotion and inflection by the hissing crackle of the encryption and ECCM that the communications system is loaded with. "221. Rolling." There's a brief pause. "321. Rolling." Figures move from their positions in the atrium, joining the milling crowd. A tall man with green eyes and a silver earring, dressed to impress in a well-tailored neotuxedo moves away from the matrix terminals. A woman with striking platinum hair in a blue chinese dress that covers everything but insinuates everything exits the lobby restrooms. A stocky dwarf in the red-gold-and-white uniform of the hotel moves from his position in line at the bellhop's stand. The eyes of all three light on the couple at the main desk a moment.
"Mr and Mrs Xiang, you are booked into your usual randomised room of course, and I have the only keycard here. All your requests have been taken care of." The receptionist is obsequious - more so than usual. He passes over a freshly encoded high-security keycard, claps his hands, and a nearby bellhop rushes to take the trolley of cases that has been wheeled in by the top-hat clad doormen. The bellboy - a stocky dwarf - collects up the trolley, and guides it carefully across the floor as they move to one of the glass pod elevators that lines the walls of the atrium, hoisting them smoothly fifteen stories into the air.
Two more elevator pods rise from other walls of the lobby, the green-eyed man staring down at the atrium floor below as he rises up to the fifteenth floor, watching the people below shrink into miniature ants scurring in the circle of chandelier light. The platninum haired woman presses herself against the glass wall of another pod, scandalising the elderly co-occupant of the lift as she squirms against the chill, and not co-incidentaly fixing that outrage into his mind rather than her features. The chiming noise announces the arrival of the liftcars near-simultaneously, and all three groups step out into the circumference corridor out of sight of the others.
The door to the suite opens at the touch of the keycard in Mrs Xiang's hand, and she and her husband swan inside, followed by the baggage cart. The bellhop bustles around, lifting the suitcases and bags into place on the racks, stealthily fixing a small spy-eye camera/microphone onto the ornate brass mirrorframe with a press of his thumb as he lowers the makeup bag into the desk. Then with bows and scrapes, after recieving a small handful of notes from the smiling Mr Xiang as a tip, he eases his way out and around the corridor, re-entering the lift and descending to the fourth floor, entering a small hotel room of much lower quality. Swiftly removing his clothes and placing them into a briefcase, he keeps an eye on the proceedings in the room via an image link in his eyeglasses, watching the waterfall bars of the microphone indicator as it records the discussions within. "223. Package en route."
Back on the fifteenth floor, the door opens, and Mr Xiang emerges to stroll back towards the elevators, ready for a night in the casino. Just as he reaches the bank of lifts, the blonde bombshell turns the corner and approaches, giving him a warm smile. They brush past each other, and none but a true expert would notice the flicker of her hand into his suit jacket as he makes a gesture of apology for the contact. His reward is a sparkling grin and a look at the undulation of her rear as she walks on past him, and once again, her assets are all that stick in the mind as he gets into the lift which rapidly drops the gambler down to the casiono floor. "321. Package collected."
She turns another corner, as they walk in sequence around the square central corridor, and impossibly passes Mr Xiang once more, who gives her a solemn nod as she brushes next to him and slips her hand into his pocket, depositing a small old-fashioned metal key within. "123. Recieved." She continues her undulating progress and enters the third bank of elevators, hitting the glowing plastic button for the underground taxi rank. "321. Exfiltrating."
Below on the fourth floor, the former bellhop disconnects the small electronic device from the communications rig and places it carefully into the shielded case with the remains of his disguise. "221. Transmission complete. Target location Delta. Exfiltrating." The door to the small room closes behind a respectable briefcase-carrying dwarven businessman in an unimposing suit who moves to the stairwell down to the lobby.
Mr Xiang enters the casino below, walking past the Luck Dragons and into the neon studded LED-flashing temple to the gods of chance and fate.
Mr Xiang walks up to his suite door and presses the button. His wife's questioning voice emerges from the speaker above the round eye of the door camera, and the rotund gentleman presses a button on his 'watch' which plays a synthesised recording of his 'own' voice. "Forgot my lucky pen, bao bei," comes the sequence. There's a snort from the suite that's audible even without the door communicator, and the door swings open.
Mr Xiang puts a half-dozen chips on red, and watches the roulette wheel spin, his eyes glazed in excitement and anticipation.
Mr Xiang walks into the suite through the opened door, smiling at his wife as he touches her on the shoulder in greeting and she smiles back at him. Then, still smiling, she goes into the cavernous bathroom on the other side of the dressing room to adjust her make-up, having suddenly had the notion that the shade of lipstick and foundation she chose, after all, is quite unsuitable.
Mr Xiang cheers as the ball comes to rest, and a pile of chips is raked onto his area of the green baize.
Mr Xiang moves quickly to the concealed safe in his suite, moving the sliding picture on the wall aside and inserting the key from his pocket to make the lock click open. It's only the work of a few more moments to extract the grey silk gem bag, and the safe is closed again, the bag is in his pocket, and the door to the suite is closing behind him. The lift banks are ahead, and the doors slide open, then closed behind him.
There is a brief shimmer of light, and then the only occupant riding down in the lift is the green-eyed man, who swiftly crosses the lobby.
From the casino comes a roar as Mr Xiang doubles his stake yet again. Lucky for some. Tucking the lapels of his neotuxedo into sharper positions, the green eyed man exits the brass-gold finery of the lobby and enters a taxi. "122, 123. Hallelujah."
