Lycaon

The dinner party ended and everyone went home. It was a relaxed and casual affair that Lycaon was unused to participating in, but his fellow members of Victoria Housekeeping had obviously enjoyed it immensely. Especially Corin, who seemed to rapidly embolden through the dinner. Under the seemingly apathetic, yet somehow protective aura of Ellen Joe: Corin blossomed briefly. She initiated conversation without stuttering and even laughed brightly once. Lycaon was impressed, and resolved to assign Corin and Ellen as partners in tasks when possible. They each seemed to fill the gap in ability of the other.

Another surprise was the Random Play neighbor, Enzo, who had left the party with a smudge on the tip of his nose that looked to be the color of Rina's lipstick; and Rina herself had seemed particularly dreamy and self-satisfied when she'd gone her own way into the city night. Lycaon was mildly amused, but not particularly interested in the social activities of his co-workers. That was their business and if they did not approach Lycaon with information, he believed they did not wish him to know it- which was entirely their prerogative.

Eventually, there was only Lycaon, Belle, and Wise.

"Lady Belle, Lord Wise, please permit me the task of cleaning from dinner," Lycaon said. "Oh, and Lord Wise, will you permit me a chance to install a few sensors on your windows before you go to sleep?"

Neither Belle nor Wise had any objection with that, so Lycaon set to cleaning up as they went upstairs. A final step was mopping the section of floor in the lobby, but that created a clean spot that was so drastically mismatched to the general non-cleanliness of the entire floor that Lycaon became deeply and compulsively annoyed. He spent the better part of an hour giving the entirety of Random Play's flooring a thorough and vigorous deep clean.

"Lycaon?" called down Wise. "I'm headed to the bath. If you want to install your things?"

Just putting away the cleaning supplies, Lycaon was glad of the good timing. "Yes, Lord Wise."

"All right- and you don't have to call me 'Lord' you know… It makes me feel like I'm at a ren faire.."

Lycaon strode up the stairs and offered no response to Wise's departing comment. Using the elaborate titles was a tenet of Victoria Housekeeping, so Lycaon would never fail to use them while on duty. As promised, the bathroom door was closed and Wise's bedroom door was open.

As was Belle's.

Lycaon stopped at Belle's open door and knocked gently on the doorframe. Belle was sitting on a small sofa in her pajamas, reading a book. Her thin frame was surprisingly curvy in the softer fabrics of the modest pajama suit. She looked slightly surprised to see Lycaon at her doorway, her blueish eyes slightly richer in the soft light of nearby lamp. The surprise was expected. It always took time for a new client to get used to a new presence in the house, and Lycaon was aware that he was rather large and toothy in appearance.

"May I be of any service, Lady Belle?" said Lycaon.

"Oh! Um! No Lycaon, I am fine. Thank you. And.. uh.. I won't need anything else tonight? Is that the kind of thing I'm supposed to say?"

"You are supposed to say what you wish and I am supposed to do my best to grant it," Lycaon said with an incline of his head. He was not displeased with the general dismissal from Belle. He himself had a great deal to get done tonight, so having Belle's personal needs removed from his To-Do's suited Lycaon. He bowed formally to Belle. "It will be as you wish, Lady Belle. But do not forget your wristband: two clicks for mundane assistance- at any time of day or night."

"R- right," said Belle. "I remember. Good night, Lycaon."

"Good night, Lady Belle."

Lycaon left her doorway for his cot in the corner of the landing, gathering up a motion sensor and a silhouette scanner- and a window jammer. He entered Wise's room, which smelled of typical human male things. Lycaon felt an impulse to begin cleaning, but as Wise was not his direct client, Lycaon refrained and concentrated on his immediate task. His practiced hands had the sensors installed on the windows and the jam in place within ten minutes. Their wireless connection to Lycaon's black box under his cot was confirmed in Lycaon's mind eye as his leg cybernetics received new data from the hub.

Lycaon returned to his cot and worked on unpacking and organizing more of his things, making his little corner look like an organized collection of gear rather than a pile of luggage. Wise eventually emerged from the bathroom, nodded an awkward goodnight to Lycaon and shut his door. Belle appeared at her open door, smiled quietly and a bit nervously at Lycaon, and then closed her own door. The siblings were in their rooms for the night, it seemed.

Lycaon cracked his knuckles. Time to get to work. He switched the sensor hub online.


Belle

Heading towards her bed for some lounge time, Belle's phone vibrated on the desktop.

"Belle," said Fairy's voice. "An encrypted private network just activated within Random Play. Do you wish me to gain access to this network? Estimated time: three hours. Estimated electrical cost: 50 kilowatt hours."

Belle frowned. That was surely Lycaon's little system. Did she want Fairy getting her hands inside there? She'd known Fairy, for longer- but she was an A.I. of dubious origin and blatant hidden ulterior motive. Belle trusted Lycaon more, despite having just met him this morning. Whatever Lycaon was setting up, Belle did not want Fairy getting her tendrils into it.

"No, Fairy," said Belle. "I forbid you from accessing that network. I want it to remain isolated."

"Affirmative, Belle," said Fairy and went silent.

Just to avoid a loophole for the A.I., Belle called Wise. It was rare to call instead of text, so Wise answered with concern.

"Belle?! Are you okay?"

"Fine," said Belle. "If you get a message from Fairy about a network, please prohibit her from accessing it. That's Lycaon's system and I don't want her in there."

Wise was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, I was just about to respond to it. I was going to say yes, actually."

"I want her out of it, Wise," said Belle, her voice going slightly sharp with urgency. "I trust Lycaon more than I trust Fairy right now. We depend on Fairy for too much and she is already integrated in all of our stuff."

"But you just met Lycaon. And Fairy: she can hear you right now, you know," said Wise.

"I know! And that's part of the problem. Don't you remember when we first encountered Fairy and she told us, directly, that she has hidden functions and hidden agreements? Well, it's only fair that I want things hidden from Fairy in return. And right now, that's Lycaon's system. I don't want her to be able to do things to it. He's probably hooking up lethal devices on it."

"Lethal! Belle-"

"Wise, please. I want it this way. Please. Just agree."

Wise was quiet again. "All right. I'll prohibit her, too. Lycaon seems all right."

"Thank you. Good night."

"Good night."


Lycaon

Lycaon's favorite book character once said a particular line that Lycaon found professionally amusing: 'Sleep is a superfluous habit conducive to ignorance'. In that spirit, he set about his night of set-up work. The blockish terminal under his cot was designed to be the hub of his sensor web, and like an industrious spider, Lycaon would use the night to weave his pattern of invisible threads.

He began with basic motion sensors on the ceiling above the stairwell (reaching the ceiling by standing with easy balance on the metal railing). Next: the ladder hatch to the roof. Lycaon returned for more bulky equipment and spent over an hour on the careful installation of a vacuum sealer, which created a pocket of void on the inside of the hatch to hold it closed. Incidentally, it had an easy release from the inside, so Belle in flight could slap the mechanism, releasing the vacuum, and the air blowing into the void would have enough power to blast the lid open and clear her escape. And as a bonus, once set, it didn't require electricity- so it was immune to EMP and other disabling effects. Lycaon particularly liked this one.

Almost as an afterthought, Lycaon tossed down an electro-mat at the base of the ladder. If active, it had enough charge to zap a bear-thiren senseless, and probably kill anything else. Due to its lethal nature, Lycaon set that one to manual activation by himself alone. It would remain inert until he sent it a signal to activate.

Lycaon felt comfortable enough with the landing to leave the immediate proximity of Belle's room and begin work downstairs. He quietly took one of his crates and carried it down. The ground floor was more of a challenge, what with two entrances in daily use, and the heavy foot traffic of customers precluded the installation of anything aggressive- lethal or not. Lycan spent another hour installing the threat detector on the front door and another on the back door, a mini-network of various sensors that was time consuming to attach and calibrate.

A few motion sensors, a silhouette scanner on the interior of the rather lovely blind Corin had picked out and installed, and a stunningly bright mini-spotlight at about head level for anyone going up the first part of the stairs. Lycaon would request the Groundskeepers to come back tomorrow first thing to install the gate at the base of the stairwell, but for now, he placed the folded picnic table in front of the stairwell as an impromptu barrier and hung a glow-in-the-dark sign on it:

N.E.P.S. Certified Protected Private Residence.

Trespassers risk severe bodily harm and/or death.

((Picture of a human skull))

By creating a signed barrier between the public and private parts of Random Play, Lycaon satisfied the legal technicalities that allowed him to install lethal booby traps in a reasonable defensive strategy. A stairwell was the perfect place for razor wire. Lycaon spent an hour installing the pop-up wires on each step and in the small switchback landing. He put them all on manual control- so they would remain safely inert until they were not.

Next, Lycaon gazed thoughtfully at the empty space above the stairwell. Any true professional would know the stairs were a deathtrap. They would try and climb, or they would have armored limbs. Or both. Lycaon would have to deal with such threats himself, most likely- but what would be the best trap to give him the advantage over someone in… say…: a government-issue military-grade hard suit?

Lycaon scratched himself behind the ear in thought. He decided on simple motion-activated strobe lights. No trap he had could damage a hardsuit, and anyone smart enough to evade the stairwell would evade anything else with wires or pressure pads. So fully automated and passively attentive motion-sensor strobes would, hopefully, blind an attacker long enough for Lycaon to dispatch them.

With the interior rigged up to Lycaon's professional satisfaction, he turned his attention to the exterior. After a cautious patrol to make sure no one was already in the lot waiting for someone to open the back door, Lycaon set about putting up motion sensor devices around the entire building in suitable spots=- paying close attention to the areas immediately in front of the building's front and back exits. Then Lycaon climbed to the roof, a backpack of sensors on his back, and he installed a slew of sensors at skylights, roof edges, and a silhouette scanner in every direction.

While Lycaon worked, his fresh sensor net's quiet vigilance over the interior kept Lycaon fully apprised of movement within Random Play. At some point while he worked in the parking lot, Belle's door sensor triggered and then the one on the bathroom door. Then the reverse a short time later. Later on the roof, Lycaon was aware Wise also went to the bathroom. Both had perhaps a bit too much sugary drink at dinner.

The full chill of the dead of night was on Lycaon as he finished the calibration on the final silhouette scanner on the roof of Random Play. The sun would rise in perhaps an hour and a half, and Lycaon could feel a subtle weight behind his eyes. Sleep would be welcome. Even a little hour's worth.

Belle's bedroom was now deep inside an expansive and diverse sensor net, so when Lycaon retired warily to his little cot, it was like the spider taking up his pot in the center circle of his web. He took out a little data cord and plugged it into his leg near the knee, and plugged the other end into his black box hub. Now the signals from the sensor hub to his leg were hardwired and thus could not even be disrupted by wireless jamming, and he would get lots of alerts if a portion of the net suddenly lost connection with the hub as a result of jamming attempts. This little wire gave the web a failsafe against advanced electronic warfare, at least as far as alerting a potentially sleeping Lycaon that it was occurring.

Lycaon collapsed backward onto his cot, his feet inertly remaining standing on the floor. An extra pillow under the back of his lower thighs made the position comfortable. And Lycaon drifted to sleep- his mind briefly thinking about Belle floating on an ocean of numbers, and he was falling towards her at great speed.

Lycaon slept. Time passed.

A sensor "beeped" in Lycaon's mind. His eyes shot open. His ears rotated this way and that. Another sensor beeped. It was the parking lot. Something human-sized was moving across it. Something that should not be there. The parking lot was not a publicly accessible place. Lycaon sat up in his cot just as a sensor near the back door of Random Play sent a signal of a presence.

Lycaon stood and leaned over the stairwell railing. He could not see the doorway to the parking lot from up here, but the vantage gave his ears a chance: someone was picking the lock on the door. Someone was invading. Qingyi was right. Belle was targeted, and she was being proved correct on the very first night of his assignment.

Lycaon's nose went to work as the door opened and the scents entered into Random Play on a gust of changing air pressure. It was a lone male human, with the undertones of alcohol and anxiousness. The threat sensor on the interior of the door pinged to Lycaon as the intruder stepped in. He was armed. Long practice with the sensor hub integration had trained Lycaon's mind to interpret the data in a small visual square in the upper portion of his eyesight. At the moment, it was a vague image of a humanoid silhouette with two blurry blobs on it- one blob looking vaguely gun shaped- an automatic pistol of some kind. And the other looked like a moderately sized blade.

The man appeared around the corner of the wall, in Lycaon's field of vision for the first time. Lycaon's natural eye did not have too much advantage in darkness, but his eyepatch did. He quickly confirmed the weaponry the man was carrying, and he recorded an image of the man's face. A man in perhaps his mid-30s with a blunted nose and with cheeks that displayed faint ether-pox scarring. Lycaon waited and watched. The man quietly moved Lycaon's barrier table out of his way with obvious intent at stealth and then he began to ascend the stairs towards Belle's residence.

Lycaon took in a slow breath, his next decision now held this intruder's life in his hands. This man seemed a low-level goon and a negligible threat to Lycaon personally, though there was always the chance of Lycaon underestimating this person. There was also inherent danger in Lycaon revealing himself, as this intruder may have allies outside the perimeter waiting to see what happened to their fool scout- or even stealthed operatives near at hand, but the latter was highly unlikely.

So: Lycaon could reveal himself, drop down, and incapacitate this person nonlethally. However, there was a slim chance that decision would compromise himself, and thus his principal's safety by providing the enemy knowledge of Lycaon's presence and capabilities.

Or: Lycaon could activate the traps and let the man face the consequences of his own choice to ignore Lycaon's visible warning sign as he entered a private residence with reasonably threatening intent. In that scenario, Belle's safety was not compromised in any way, whatsoever. Zero additional risk.

Lycaon activated the traps.

The man took another step. The tac-light strobe on the stair landing flashed him in the face. Lycaon heard him grunt, saw him lift an instinctive arm to shield his eyes, and he took a faltering step forward.

His right foot pressed through the first razor wire- the atomically sharpened metal slicing through the man's cloth pants and skin and bone and muscle and blood- all of it like it was not even there. The man probably didn't notice anything wrong until his body sank towards the ground about eight extra inches and his weight went down on the bleeding, truncated stub of half his right shin. He grunted and fell over, perhaps just starting to get the first pain signals in his brain when his neck landed on the razor wire trap on the landing. The man's head bounced away from the fallen torso, leaving a trail of blood as it did so.

Lycaon sighed as Random Play filled with the smell of fresh blood and a rapidly emptied bowel. The wires were so effective but so messy! And he'd just cleaned the floor down there, too. He waited, attentive to the sensor network, waiting for signals of additional intruders. For half an hour, nothing happened but the pool of fresh blood grew to its maximum size and began to dry.

He placed a hand to his ear, activating the communicator. "Headquarters, this is Von Lycaon. Please report to the PubSec station closest to Sixth Street that I have a trap fatality at the Random Play video store."

"Yes, sir," said the operator (not Rina tonight). "Do you require backup?"

"No," said Lycaon. "Singular invader. I could use a cleanup crew, though."

"Sorry, sir," said the operator blandly. "There are no cleaning crews available in your sector. Please inquire with PubSec investigators when they arrive."

"Thank you, Headquarters," said Lycaon with a sigh and cut the connection. Ask PubSec to clean up the body? Not a chance. They would come and take some pictures and write some reports and take the corpse- but everything down there that was oozing onto the floor of Random Play… that would be Lycaon's job to clean.

Delightful.