Emz lay there on the slushy boat tarp, feeling tender and sorry for himself, but eventually pulled himself together and reached for his gun. By habit, he touched the biometric trigger to check his ammo count and saw the dim display flicker between 14 and 15. Puzzled, he shook the gun until it settled on 15, then holstered it. He slowly scrambled across the unsteady craft and carefully climbed onto a small wooden dock. He stepped back to the raised vertical concrete bluff of the boardwalk and climbed some rusty metal ladders back to road level. It was still dark, and no one was around. Even his taxi had rolled away. He was actually quite close to his home, so he silently limped back to his apartment block, feeling a cold anger simmer away in his body.

  Back in his warm loft, Emz stretched out on the sofa and stared at the ceiling rafters, replaying the events of the previous day. Losing Gary again was professionally frustrating, though not critical, and he had to admit it was impressive how spry the old man was. However, it was the twins, who had appeared from nowhere and attacked him, that made his angry thoughts swirl. They had clearly been following him. He recalled feeling uncomfortable and overly visible a few times over the past couple of days—he must have subconsciously noticed something, perhaps a car oddly parked or people loitering nearby. But how? Emz prided himself on constantly varying his travel: using random routes on the Metro, switching to taxis or buses, and walking through pedestrian areas or large buildings with multiple exits. So, it couldn’t have been a drone flying overhead, and he would have spotted the Wunder twins—or anyone—tailing him on the Metro. His habit of changing lines, going out of his way, and looping back was specifically designed to make anyone following the same route stand out as suspicious. Was there a team of people in a surveillance rotation, messaging ahead to hand off the tail? Surely not.

  Drexler was not a gang boss—just an arrogant, wealthy man, dodgy for sure, but unlikely to command an army of men at his disposal. Did he have his tech guy, Sanna, hack into the city’s transport cameras? That would be impressive, given the level of government encryption, but it wouldn’t explain the private taxis Emz had taken—unless Sanna had hacked those too. Emz always used rotating fake IDs, so Sanna would have had to know all of them, which made it highly improbable.

  Emz looked at his wrist screen. Sanna could just hack into my mobile. He frowned. It was possible, but Beata had added security to his systems, and he was confident it would be tough to break—she was at the top of her game. Though, Sanna did have the device while Emz was talking with Drexler in the limo, so it wasn’t impossible. But in that case, Sanna could have more easily put a tracker on any item Emz had taken with him.

  He thought back to the twins, making him empty his pockets onto the table. Then it hit him. Emz snapped his gaze to the gun and holster on a side table next to his sofa. He snatched up the gun and gently touched the biometric trigger. Once again, the dim red ammo display flickered between 14 and 15. He ejected the clip and took the spare one attached to the holster, slotting it in. The ammo display showed 15. Emz ejected it again and returned the original. Once again, it flickered between 14 and 15.

  Emz ejected the dubious clip one last time and examined it. It looked normal, but it would explain why the twins had thrown his gun into the boat—not just out of bravado, but tactically.

  “Fuckers!” he bellowed, then suddenly wondered if the gun would even fire should he have needed it—maybe a double sabotage. “Fuckers!” he cursed again, with even more anger.

  He got up from the sofa, loaded his gun with the clean spare clip, then walked over to his kitchen table and placed the dodgy one down as if it were radioactive. He did a thorough check of all his other items, just to be sure. When he was as confident as he could be that it was only the clip that had been tampered with, he stared at it with his arms crossed, contemplating how best to turn the discovery to his advantage.

  Hours later, Emz left the tracked clip in his loft apartment and headed for the roof. He opened the access door and stepped out into freezing gusts that blasted snowflakes into his face. One of the reasons Emz had chosen his apartment building was that it had a touching neighbour, slightly taller, and accessible via a short grey metal ladder from his rooftop.

  Emz walked to the southwest corner of his rooftop and, keeping his head as low as possible, scanned north-south along Dylan and east-west along Rabelais. There were only three parked cars: two on the west corner of Rabelais and a third directly below outside his apartment. It seemed too conspicuous and lazy for surveillance, so his tail was probably one of the two parked on Rabelais—or both. One was dark orange and the other off-white. He thought back and didn’t recall seeing an orange car recently, but he had a feeling he’d seen the cream or ivory one before.

  He slowly stepped away from the edge, then quickly scurried up onto the rooftop of the other building, his fingertips slightly burning from the ice-cold metal rungs. He used the roof access door to descend through the neighbouring building and out through the entrance. He wore a khaki autumn jacket with a thick dark blue hoodie pulled up over his head to avoid any observer recognising him—not that they would be watching the entrance to this building. Instead, they should think he was still in his loft.

  He took a quick scan of the west corner of Rabelais and could just see the bonnet and windscreen of the off-white car, which appeared as a cream white now that he was closer. Although he couldn’t make out any specific details of the occupants, he could see from the vague shapes that there were two similar medium sized figures in the front seats. Gotcha, he concluded before strolling off north on Dylan.

  At the next intersection, he went west on Queneau, while checking to see if the cream car was following. It didn’t appear to be. Then he went north again on Cash, up over a couple of blocks, and west on Ninh to take Bowie north for the rendezvous with Luki on the corner of Lawrence street. Emz arrived a good ten minutes early, so, seeing as Armstrong street and the bay front were just one more street over, he took a quick look over there.

  Emz looked south down Armstrong to where he could see the start of The Row, the bayfront pedestrianised café area a few blocks down. He could see the tiny movement of people in the distance milling around for lunch. Where were you running to, Gary? he mused.

  Standing on the corner of east-west Lawrence street, Emz was almost at the vertical midpoint of Poyz, between the north and south extremities of the district. He swung his gaze north along Armstrong into where the Norton neighbourhood began a few blocks up, with its grand hotels and restaurants, and the yachts moored in Norton Marina. Is your big Saturday run the entire length of the bay? he wondered. He looked at his wrist screen and brought up a map of Poyz—a perfect square grid, twenty-six by twenty-six streets, named alphabetically from northwest to southeast, from the As to the Zs. All the north-south streets were named after musicians, and the east-west streets after writers. About half of the names were American, thanks to the big American construction firms that won the contracts to build much of Baltic City, with the other half coming from historical figures from across the world, completing the alphabetical naming. Emz mapped out the hypothetical running route with his finger, postulating that if Gary typically ran west along Zola, then north all the way along the bayfront until he reached the corner of Armstrong and Austen, he would roughly be about diagonally opposite his home, somewhere in the southeast. So, would Gary just turn around and go back, or weave through the inner streets to complete a triangle?

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Emz smiled with realisation. “Of course, you're a fucking ultramarathon runner. I was thinking too small with Sutton Park. Your big Saturday run is the whole of Poyz—one big square right around the outer streets!” He said aloud to himself with glee. Gotcha.

  When Luki’s van pulled up, exactly on time, Emz was standing ready, smiling and reading a message on his screen. The door opened, and warm musty air spilled out. Emz placed one hand on the doorframe, then took an exaggerated amount of time to kick off every inch of snow from his boots before stepping in so that enough fresh crisp air circulated into the stale interior. When he finally moved inside, allowing the door to close and the van to move on, he saw Luki behind his desk again, frantically rubbing his arms at the drop in temperature, with a scowl on his face.

  “You let too much cold air in!” the techie complained.

  Emz shrugged. “Surely you didn’t want me to trample snow all in here?”

  Luki just shook his head with irritation, not having a decent enough reply for that, and instead moved on to the reason for the meeting. “I have the information you wanted on the airtaxi, but we need to talk about payment first.”

  “Yeah, sure. But before that, let me give you a full list of all the things I need and by when, and you can also tell me how much of a discount I’ll get when I get your Pokémon card back.”

  “Discount?” Luki replied, bristling at the word. “That was only just to open up a working arrangement.”

  “Come on, mate, we both know you held info from me. He wasn’t just spry; he was an ultra-fit runner, and you’ve sent other people to get him before me, so you knew it was super hard to pin him down.” Emz jabbed a playful finger at him. “You played me a little.”

  The comment gave Luki pause, his eyelids flickering as his pedantic brain processed it. “Okay, we can discuss a discount. If and when you find him, and get my card back,” he added, trying to regain his dominance on the matter.

  “Well, I know his weekly running routine, and he’s just got in touch with BigP0kéBall$$ wanting to discuss a trade.” Emz said with relish, gesturing to a message visible on his wrist screen.

  Luki looked at the mobile, then back up to Emz. “I told you I am not trading.”

  Emz sighed. “I know, mate, it's bait. I’m going to get him to come to me, then I’ll take your card from him.”

  “Okay. How do you know it is him?”

  “Someone called M0t0rMe0wth is interested in trading Blastoise for Chansey—”

  “I am not trading,” Luki quickly cut in.

  Emz rapped the desk to get Luki’s full attention. “Mate, listen. It’s bait, it’s just bait. Chill out.”

  Luki just closed his mouth, looking a bit petulant.

  “But he wants 10k as well for the difference.” Emz looked up at Luki. “Does that seem about right?”

  Luki gave a tentative nod but quickly tapped on his computer. “Yes, that is about the average difference at the moment.”

  Emz nodded, then typed a reply. “Okay, I’m telling him no, that I’m looking for a straight swap as it’s not my priority right now.”

  Luki looked aghast. “Why? He was interested?”

  “Because it’s bait, so it can't look too easy or he’ll know it’s a trick.”

  Luki didn’t look convinced by the risk. “You do not even know if it is him.”

  “I guess you don’t recognise the username, then?”

  Luki shook his head.

  “Can you find out when it was created?”

  The techie started tapping away at his computer, far more in his element. He found the result. “Today… an hour and forty-two minutes ago.”

  Emz grinned. “Seems like it could be him then. I posted the trade yesterday, and I almost caught him this morning, so he’s probably a bit rattled and looking for options.”

  “Okay, that sounds logical, but you may have just put him off and ruined the plan.”

  A new message popped up, and Emz read aloud. “He wants me to prove I have the card.” He looked at Luki. “Get all the cards I posted about trading, and a clean sheet to put them on so I can send him an image.”

  Luki did as he was asked. There wasn’t a clean sheet, so instead, Emz folded one of Luki’s black t-shirts into a square and placed it on the desk with all the cards on it.

  Emz looked at Luki’s fingers, each one with overgrown nails. “Next, I need you to trim your nails right down.” Emz lifted his hand to stop his next question and as a demonstration. “He saw me twice, he knows I’m not white, and I don’t want him to remember your long nails. It’s all an illusion and about removing doubt. So cut your nails on your off-hand and hold the Chansey card a bit closer to the camera.”

  Luki silently agreed and went off to cut his nails in the van’s small bathroom.

  “Make sure you file and rub the edges with something so the cuts don’t look too new.” Emz shouted through the door. “Also, could he work out that the photo was sent from your van?”

  Luki didn’t immediately answer, but ten seconds later he came out and raised his nails for inspection.

  Emz gave his approval.

  The techie sat back at his desk, and with his left forefinger and thumb, lifted the Chansey card above the others, ready for the photo. “No, I can not think of a way he could. My routing is dynamically and securely adjusted as the van moves around the streets, and your mobile signal will not be connected to my van in any way, so it is safe.”

  Emz nodded, and after a little final adjustment to the display cards, he sent a photo to M0t0rMe0wth through his mobile.

  Twenty minutes later, another message popped up, which Emz read aloud. “OK, I can go to 5k?”

  “We have him hooked!” Luki said with a smile, getting more and more into the gambit.

  Emz chewed his lip in thought, then typed a reply. “I’ve just told him that I’m sorry, but it’s a straight swap only. But if he changes his mind, I’ll be at my Expo stall at 10am.” He explained.

  “Are you sure that is not going too far?”

  Emz shook his head. “Nah, it was needed to remove any last doubt,” he replied, more confidently than he felt. “So, I need a VIP ticket, a cosplay costume, and a stall, ideally near a fire exit.”

  Luki nodded. “I will arrange them.”

  Emz glanced at his screen, in case there was a reply, but there wasn’t. “And for my other thing, did you get into the Gemini Building systems, the fancy apartment block over in Norton, to find out when the next airtaxi has been booked and by who—”

  "Yes, Bogdan Petrovi? has scheduled one for Wednesday night at 11 p.m., with a return on Friday at 1 a.m."

  Emz grinned at the surprisingly positive news. “Damn, that’s actually even better that I’d hoped. Okay, these are all things I need and when.” He added, forwarding a digital list to Luki’s computer.

  Luki scanned the document, read it again, then discreetly searched a few things out of Emz’s line of sight before finally giving his quote. “Forty thousand, with half refunded if you manage to get my card.”

  It was a steep amount, especially if he couldn’t secure the trading card from Gary, but confidence was king. Emz agreed, thrusting out a hand. “Deal,” he said as their hands clasped. “Now for the easy part—we pull off the same heist twice and convince four different groups of people to meet at the same time and place. Easy!”