"It'll be another hour," Julia said to her father quietly as Beth slept a short distance away in the other room of their ad hoc operations center.

The two rooms were sparsely furnished. One of those furnishings was a small red tubular bed frame and a mattress adorned with Buzz Lightyear sheets that was more suited to a child than the 5' 7" woman who topped out at 125 pounds soaking wet who currently slept there in an excellent approximation of the fetal position, her hands protected by a set of black nitrile gloves.

A collection of equipment sat in charging slots in a case nearby. An assortment of throwing darts and edged weapons, all made from reaction bonded boron carbide to avoid metal detectors, sat in a separate foam lined case, any residual ethanol left over from the ultrasonic cleaner that also sat just a few feet away on the floor under the sink in the small bathroom having long since dried in the warm room. Beth's boots, duster, gloves, wig and outer shell were still in the UV cleaner that was the source of the purplish blue glow emanating from the equally small kitchen. The continuing glow meant that the cleaner was still eradicating any trace of Beth's DNA from those external garments that would keep her identity a well guarded secret.

Beth would spend an hour or so of her remaining prep time shaving and exfoliating any portion of her body not covered by the silicon skull cap and atomic blonde wig to minimize her shedding of DNA, DNA that was on file with a host of law enforcement agencies.

Julia sat on a small futon with her feet curled up underneath her, her own hands protected by a set of purple nitrile gloves as her iPhone alternated from one hand to the other. It was a precaution that they took so that they could vacate their small base in less time than it took for anyone to travel from the ground floor to the fourth floor converted apartment that provided ample view of the street below without the need to wipe their fingerprints away first.

What view Julia had of the lobby came courtesy of the two pinhole cameras that Julia herself had positioned there. She could collect her laptop, the two cases and the larger collapsible UV cleaner in less than a minute, dump the ethanol from the ultrasonic cleaner onto the keyboard that, along with the twenty-seven inch monitor, she would abandon, and vacate the premises before anyone arrived.

But it seemed that none of those precautions would be needed at the moment. The lobby showed almost no activity, as did the street below. It was a quiet afternoon; the saner denizens of the city choosing to hide from the July heat and humidity.

"How long has it been running?"

"About three hours."

"You're sure that this is the main distribution point."

"Beth is sure, but she was sure about that last night," Julia answered as she lay back on the futon and put her feet up.

"It sounds bigger than the building last night."

"It's got to be five times the size," Julia said, "it's taking four hours to map the whole thing."

"What bandwidth are you using?"

Alfred Pennyworth was aware that his daughter knew Ultra Wide Band Synthetic Aperture Radar better than almost anyone. He had asked the question because he wanted to listen to her voice for as long as possible, and since Julia knew her father almost as well as she knew Through The Wall Radar Imaging she knew it was not meant as a serious question, but she answered it anyway.

"24 GHz with a 360 MHz bandwidth."

She could almost hear her father doing the math calculating how much volume could be scanned in four hours with that frequency at that bandwidth.

"That's too big for a single person to search safely. She'll be there all night. She shouldn't be doing this alone. She shouldn't be doing this at all."

"She knows. She's doing it anyway."

Julia could not remember an instance when her father had ever used profanity in her presence, but she knew quite well how to interpret silences such as she was hearing now: as a placeholder for "insert profanity here."

"She'll release four micro drones as soon as she's inside. That'll help. She'll be fine. If not, I'll get her out. No worries."

Julia imagined another string of profanity during the short period of silence that followed.

"Text me when it starts. We'll be waiting."

"We?"

"He's worried. So am I. Did you change servers?"

"Yes. I'm using the new one to talk to you now."

"Good. Don't forget to text when you start and when you're finished."

"I won't forget. I love you, Dad."

"I love you too, pumpkin," her father replied in a very un-British manner.

Julia placed her cell phone on her small desk next to the dock that connected her laptop to the monitor and keyboard that would be her battle station for the evening. She looked at the time shown on the display.

6:00 PM. Two and a half hours till sundown.

Julia turned slowly in her chair and looked at Beth where she slept. She seemed like a small child, like the child's bed had brought her back to an earlier time, a time without care, or worry. No nightmares, no bad memories, no inkling of the hell her life would become.

Julia loved these quiet times, watching her friend sleep, seeming not to have a care in the world, whatever her sleeping mind was experiencing. Beth always slept like a log before an op. It was the long, idle nights at home in their apartment when the demons visited her. Julia did not understand it, not really; though she had a vague sense that it was the night's impending action that made Beth feel less like a victim, and that feeling helped Beth sleep.

Julia looked at the display again.

6:05 PM.

I can let her sleep a bit longer.

"Are you done in here?"

Julia stuck her head through the door and asked just as Beth was finishing up in the bathroom. Beth saw the orange latex glove with green finger tips on Julia's right hand and knew that Julia was walking around their small base adding recent fingerprints that would be identified as belonging to James "Buddy" Buzzi, one of Carmine's bag men, to the older ones that were scattered around on anything a normal person might touch.

"I'm done," Beth answered, "time to get this road on the show."

The UWBSAR scan had finished a while ago, and the wireframe representation of the building at the corner of Avenue C and 15th Street was already displayed on the large monitor. The interior, mapped with visible light, infrared light, sonar, and laser, would be filled in quickly once Beth was inside and had deployed her spherical microdrones.

Beth appeared from the bedroom in wig, shorts, t-shirt, flip flops and a largish gym bag.

"Straight shot down FDR Drive to LAZ Parking. Four cameras inside, but none outside," Julia said.

"Easy peasy."

"9:00 PM," Julia said as she turned to the monitor and put on her Jabra Evolve 2 headphones and brought up the video image being transmitted by Beth's green contact lenses.

"I hate how the back of my head looks," Julia said into the boom microphone.

"Reading you loud and clear," Beth's voice came back to her through her noise canceling headset.

"That's because I'm sitting right in front of you."

"Hilarious."

One Uber ride north, a cab ride east and another Lyft south put Beth just outside LAZ Parking at 251 Avenue C.

"It's 9:40 PM, do you know where your children are?" Julia asked.

"Mrs. Kane...look what your daughter is doing...," Beth answered in the melodic voice of an accusing neighborhood busybody.

"Hold there a minute, I have a good signal."

"Copy that."

Beth waited the two minutes it took for Julia to get into the video feed for all four cameras, record the empty garage, and then begin to play the footage back on a continuous loop.

"OK. We are good."

"Got it," Beth said as she stepped into the garage and briefly glanced around as she walked what she thought was a safe distance and picked a spot between a wall and an SUV before stripping off everything she was wearing and unzipping her gym bag to remove the inner mesh liner. The concrete floor felt cool against her feet as she stepped into the thin liner. It was a process that she knew very well, this transformation from Elizabeth Kane into someone else that still did not have a name.

Who taught you how to do that? Beth had heard someone ask on a TV show that Julia had been watching at home.

No one, someone else had answered.

Maybe being no one is not such a bad thing, Julia thought to herself as she slid her arms through the sleeves of the duster and felt is settle around her.

"Three minutes, thirty seconds," Julia said once Beth had finished her transformation, "slowpoke."

"Fuck you, doll face, I'm already sweating like a pig. Everything is sticky."

"I'm hot. I'm sweaty. Boo fucking hoo. It's New York in July."

"OK, I'm clear," Beth said as she exited the garage even though Julia could see for herself. Beth rolled her almost empty gym bag up tightly and stuffed it into a nearby trash can before setting into the empty road to proceed across Avenue C towards her destination. She was alone, no cars or pedestrians in sight. The sky was dark but she could still make out the large Con Edison structure behind the building in front of her, and the light reflecting off the water behind both.

"OK, pausing the loop, going back to live feed."

It took very little time until Beth was right beside the grey concrete wall with the green chain link fence on top of it that was the last thing standing between her and her target. It would take her approximately six seconds to clear the fence, another five or six to reach the wall of the building, and the industrial window that would be her point of entry. Once she was inside, she would take the four tiny drones out of her duster pocket and toss them into the air and let them do their thing. Then the real work would start.

"Here we go," Beth said as she backed up four strides to get a good running start.