Establishing Your Presence

After confirming a couple of details with HQ, you check your watch. It’s still early in the day. You send Emma Rain a quick message, asking if anything’s going on tonight. Regardless of her answer, you’ll have a way to play this.

A couple of minutes later, she replies. “Party at Playboy Mansion, 6 pm,” followed by a winky face. She’s not being too subtle about this, but then again, she’s probably used to getting what she wants.

“Head over together @615?” you ask, and she confirms. With any luck, Angela Zimmerman will be there too, and you can begin making a name for yourself with her.

The next few hours fly by in busy administrative and intelligence work. At three, you tap on Liz’s shoulder, and she looks up from her laptop.

“What’s up?” she asks.

“Tired of being cooped up all day. Want to get some legwork in, take a walk around the estate periphery?”

“You’re just nervous about your little date tonight,” Liz says. “Walk it off if you need to.”

“So are you coming?” you ask.

She takes a moment to finish up some application form and then shuts her laptop.

“I guess so, since you insist,” she says.

From the outside, it’s clear that Angela owns a very sizeable amount of property. Though you can’t physically gain access into the place yet, since it’s surrounded by gates and whirring security cameras, you can still get a fair idea of what’s going on from an initial walk-around.

The house itself is a modern sleek building, filled with steel and glass, shaped somewhat like a sailboat. It stands atop a small hill, with a massive curated garden surrounding it. As you and Liz slowly walk around the place, a pinhole camera in your cufflinks snaps photos of the grounds.

“There’s a river flowing through this side, it cuts across the hill,” you say, pointing at the faintly visible brook.

“Looks like it runs into the house,” Liz says. “Probably fancy decoration, but it could be an access point for us.”

“There’s going to be filters and it’s going to be guarded hard,” you reply. “But it wasn’t in the Alpha-K report. I wonder how recently it was built.”

Liz is already onto something else, however. “Look at the guards. They’re posted in terrible locations, no clear line of sight anywhere. You and I could probably sneak in through ten different ways without being noticed. There’s no way this is accidental.”

“It’s almost as if she’s baiting in intruders,” you say. “This quadrant has no visible cameras, and notably fewer guards. Uncharacteristically sloppy.”

Liz suddenly turns to face you, angling herself so that her hands appear between your body and hers. They’re not visible from any angle on the outside.

“You’re not planning to grab my cock now, are you?” you mutter, but you watch her hands intently as they flash through a series of signs. Watch for microphones and cameras out here, she signs.

You nod, and sign back to her, keeping your hands close. Talk later, I’ll just take photos, you sign back. Although the jammer in your pocket should be producing high frequency white noise that would disrupt the ability for most microphones to pick it up, it’s possible that they’ve got something more sophisticated.

With that, she kisses you and then breaks off, continuing to walk as usual. A decent enough cover for anyone manning the cameras.

“Lovely weather though, isn’t it?” you say, and Liz nods, her eyes sweeping over the house once more.

By the time you finish walking around the entire hill, the time’s 5:30, so you decide to head over to Emma’s place.