I hadn’t stayed in a hotel quite like this before. Minimalist. The rooms are basic. Comfortable but .. basic. A large bed, bathroom ‘capsule’ I suppose they call it, a small niche to hang a couple of shirts. I hadn’t brought much in the way of luggage though. An overnight bag. That was all. Clean shirt, razor… that sort of thing. It was all I needed. This was a…
It was so cold that her breath whispered in the clear, night air and the snow crunched sharply under her feet. A big fat moon, skewered upon the spike of St. Basil’s Cathedral’s central core, vied for attention with the bright, modern lights the square lately had acquired. She walked briskly from St. Basil’s towards the red brick building of the State Historical Museum, less garishly lit and exhaling its…
Sometime in the late 70’s in Moscow. Fix me a drink, make it a strong one, Hey comrade, a drink, make it a long one, My hands are shaking and my feet are numb, My head is aching and the bar’s going round, And I’m so down, in this foreign town; Alec Freeman downed another double vodka shot, his smile never reaching his eyes but the drunken Russian…
The room was bland and white. Not the glaring white of fresh paint, but a tired, dulled white, as if it had been awake too long, and seen too much, to bother trying to be bright and alert any more. As if anyone really cared anyway. There was a table and two chairs in the middle. The floor was there. That was all you could say about it. It knew…
Rini-chan looked at the tiny flash drive in her hand. Then she looked at the USB port someone had installed in the back of one of Ford’s computers. She read the instructions in her other hand, stuck the drive in the port and pushed the tiny jeweled button on the end that wasn’t connected. The entire thing lit up as it did whatever it was programmed to do. “Mom, if…