Chương 425: 199.Remember to Eat Breakfast

The hard-shell case was large and heavy. Heavy enough that when I opened it, my wrist complained first, then my shoulder, then my lower back. Three joints, lodging three separate protests. I ignored all of them. Cases like this usually held things more unreasonable than their own weight. No point arguing with the packaging. The latch clicked open. I pushed the lid all the way back and let it rest against the side of the bed. What I saw first, I recognized. Orange. Rectangular blocks.

Surfaces covered in red-on-black warning stickers, layered neatly one over the other, like someone had patiently spent time—methodically, in six different typefaces—repeating the message that this thing will explode.

"… Thermobaric explosive." I said the name aloud, quietly. Not from surprise. Because in moments like this, naming the thing out loud helped the brain accept reality without drama. One of the few genuinely useful life skills I picked up on the Yukikaze. Then the second layer. A uniform, folded with almost aggressive precision. Black base, silver trim, collar stiff, shoulder seams flat, a small Imperial crest on the chest catching the room light in a matte cold glint. Standard issue.

Standard enough that even someone like me—who had no particular interest in uniforms—could identify it at a glance. Galactic Empire regular officer's service dress. And here was the problem. The Galactic Empire held the view that women in the military reduced efficiency, disrupted discipline, undermined unit cohesion, and—my personal favorite rationale—caused unnecessary emotional entanglements. The Empire therefore prohibited women from serving.

Which meant Imperial military uniforms were made exclusively in men's cuts. And yet a men's-cut Imperial officer's service uniform was now lying quietly in my luggage case. I stared at it for three seconds.

"…Colonel Wiesland." I said his name in a very calm voice.

"Is this set intended for me?" Nobody answered. The room was quiet enough that I could hear the version of myself inside my own head—the Hoshino Shimo one—laughing, very softly. When I lifted the uniform, a thin booklet slid out from the folds and slapped onto the bed. I picked it up. The cover was that particular shade of institutional beige—cheap enough to inspire a kind of grudging respect.

Printed on it, in a font so neat it bordered on stupid, were five large characters: Quick Introduction to Imperial I looked at those five characters. They looked back at me.

"…" I flipped the booklet open at random and landed on a page with properly formatted example sentences: Guten Tag, Herr Oberst! (Good day, Colonel!) Jawohl, Herr Oberst! (Yes, Colonel!) Meldung: Der Gang ist frei. (Report: corridor is clear.) Grüßen Sie! (Salute!) I turned another page. Bitte zeigen Sie Ihren Ausweis. (Please show your identification.) Ich bin mit der Durchführung des Auftrags beauftragt. (I am authorized to execute the mission.) Kein Kommentar. (No comment.) One more page. Halt! (Stop!) Hinlegen! (Get down!) Hände hoch! (Hands up!) I closed the booklet gently and set it back on the bed.

"…Colonel Wiesland." I said his name again.

"Is the sequence of example sentences in this booklet perhaps slightly off?" A normal language primer, for reference, usually went: hello, thank you, excuse me, where is the bathroom. Not: good day Colonel, no comment, get down. Though this might simply mean that my definition of normal differed somewhat from the Colonel's. I set the uniform aside and kept digging. Two wigs. One long, one short. The long one was the kind used for the low ponytail style an attaché trainee would wear. The short one was… well.

It was a military cut. Specifically, the kind of cut a male soldier would have. I held the short one up to the light. Good craftsmanship. The hairline work was especially fine, the sideburn edges done to realistic detail.

"…I see." I see. Colonel Wiesland, you really have taken the details to a level that makes a person want to use profanity. Next layer. A hotel server's uniform. Black vest, white shirt, narrow tie, slim trousers. Folded just as precisely as the military one. Then— A chest binder and compression shorts. Half-body style. I looked at it. It looked at me.

"…" I picked it up, tested the weight, checked the material. Stretch fabric, reinforced compression structure in the lining, cut with a precision that bordered on merciless. This was not the casual everyday type. This was the professional kind—the kind where, once you put it on, your chest would effectively cease to exist for two days. I made a mental note about Colonel Wiesland. Entry one: this Colonel has a more precise understanding of this person's body than this person has of her own. That was uncomfortable.

But considered from another angle: a Colonel who could not calculate your binder size probably also could not calculate which list you'd end up on, which room you'd be taken out in, or which ventilation shaft your body would be routed through. From that perspective, being calculated this precisely was almost something to be grateful for. I was not grateful. I put the binder onto the growing pile—uniform, wigs, booklet—which had assembled itself into a small, very specific hill on the bed.

The hill looked like a cosplay convention entry with an unhealthy theme. I kept digging. Lower layer. I lifted the soft divider panel. A folding semi-automatic shotgun, in its dedicated holster, folded so neatly it looked like very aggressive picnic equipment. A smart photon submachine gun, matte deep-grey, biometric lock indicator on the grip blinking slowly green. It recognized me. That gave me a feeling I couldn't quite decide whether to call touching or deeply concerning. Then ammunition. A lot of ammunition.

Enough that I began to wonder if Colonel Wiesland had simply moved half a supply depot. I looked at this entire layer.

"…Colonel Wiesland." Third time saying his name. This time, the respect in my voice had changed from the first.

"Is the goal here to protect Her Highness Hedwig." I said it one word at a time.

"Or to stage a terrorist attack." Nobody answered. Though I was fairly sure I already knew. The answer was usually clearest when he didn't reply. I had thought that was everything. I genuinely had. I had even started calculating in my head which outfit to hang first, which wig to try on first, whether the charming little language booklet should be read in the bathroom and then flushed. But I glanced back at the case. Something was off. The depth of the bottom layer was wrong.

With a hard-shell case of these specs, the outer frame should have been thinner than it appeared. About a centimeter had been absorbed somewhere. Not much, but once you noticed it, you couldn't un-notice it. I pulled the small blade from the small of my back. Habits were hard to change. Even with a different name and a different face, habits followed the person, not the identity. I pressed the tip into the seam of the false bottom and worked it around the edge. Click. The panel snapped open.

I looked at what was inside. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed. Not from fatigue. Because some things, viewed standing up, produced an overwhelming impulse to walk straight out of the room and pretend none of this had ever happened. Sitting down made it easier to face reality.

"… So it really is a terrorist attack," I said quietly. Laid flat in the hidden compartment, one facing each direction, were two carbon-alloy war axes. Not the ceremonial kind. The kind pulled out for forced-entry boarding operations—axe blades scored with anti-fracture grooves, handles wrapped in non-slip grip tape, the rear end fitted with the blunt impact head used to smash open cabin locks. One axe brought into a banquet venue would be enough to cause the entire concierge team to resign on the spot.

There were two. Between the axes, side by side, were two objects that appeared to be grenades. I did not touch them. My philosophy on grenades had always been traditional: if you can avoid touching, avoid touching; if you can avoid looking, avoid looking; if you can avoid knowing, avoid knowing. These three principles had saved me several times. Then I flipped the entire false-bottom panel over. The underside. The lining.

"…" The entire lining was packed with orange blocks. The same type as the top layer, only arranged more tightly, more densely. Perfectly ordered, block against block, like someone had very patiently, by hand, embedded an entire magazine's worth of thermobaric explosive into the lining of a luggage case. I looked at it. I tried to estimate the yield. I stopped halfway through. Finishing the calculation would only make my mood worse.

"Fuck," I said, very calmly.

"That's enough to blow a whole city up to the Moon, isn't it?" I paused.

"Well. We're on the Moon already," I added, and actually laughed. For about two seconds. Then I stopped, because I realized if I kept laughing at that, I might laugh myself into tears. For a trained former Lieutenant, that would be undignified. I set the false-bottom panel back into place, gently, like covering a sleeping predator. If this predator woke, it would take three city blocks with it in a very dramatic fashion.

Those three city blocks happened to be exactly where Her Highness Hedwig was scheduled to appear tomorrow. Colonel Wiesland had, of course, already calculated that. I pulled my attention away from the false bottom and looked at the case as a whole. It was only now that I noticed: on the inner surface of the false-bottom panel, in its least conspicuous corner, there was a very small engraving. Small enough to be completely invisible unless you were looking for it. I leaned in. It was an initial. Two strokes only.

Signed in the kind of casual, self-satisfied way that said the person who made it had been in no hurry. L. V. I stared at those two letters for three seconds.

"…Honestly," I said to him, in my head.

"You send me a full case of instruments for killing people, and you still remember to sign it. Were you worried I wouldn't know who it was from?" Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. I actually knew why he'd signed it. Because every single item in this case could be denied. The uniform could be a misdirected shipment. The wigs could be costume supplies. The binder could be personal effects. The language booklet could be a souvenir.

The shotgun and submachine gun could be a warehouse error. Even the orange blocks could be explained away as item code misprint during routine transport. Only this signature could not be denied. This signature was left for me. Not for enemies, not for courts, not for any third party who might open the case. Just for me. This is from me. You know. I know you know. Do what needs to be done. That was roughly what it meant. I looked at those two letters for a long time.

Long enough to notice that my pulse was slower than when I'd entered the room. Slower. Steadier. Colder. I knew this feeling. It was the pre-combat pulse from when the Yukikaze was still operational. I had believed I would never feel that pulse again. Apparently I was wrong. Apparently the body remembered. Apparently all it took was someone laying out a full case of city-ending materials in front of you, signing a corner, and the body would switch back to that state on its own.

"…" I closed the case gently. Not all the way. Top layer latched, bottom layer left with a small gap. That way, if someone came into the room unexpectedly, I could restore the appearance of an ordinary, slightly over-packaged work bag in under a second. I stood up from the bed and walked to the window. Outside was the same windless Lunar City. Beyond the glass dome, space was very seriously black. Artificial light assembled the city below in warm-colored sections.

Approximately twenty hours remained until tomorrow's banquet. I began to sort through the list in my head. Some of the names on it could be handled quietly mid-banquet—their bodies would be mistaken for cardiac events, and no one would notice until after the event ended. Those were the appetizers. Some, once handled, would have the entire floor classifying me as public enemy number one within forty seconds, every bodyguard, every guard, every harmless-looking server becoming a gun walking toward me.

Those were the main course. Two or three of them, if I moved, would have the entire hotel locked down immediately, with Imperial rapid response forces landing on the district within twelve minutes, and Her Highness Hedwig being removed by her own people under the name of protection. Those were dessert. Dessert could not be touched. Not tonight. The main course required timing. The appetizers could go first.

As for the seven-minute window Colonel Wiesland had left—that window was reserved for the most expensive item on the menu. I stared out the window and walked the entire menu from beginning to end in my head. When I finished, I found there was one very critical problem still unresolved.

"…Think it through first," I said quietly.

"How to get into the venue." Attaché Trainee Ayase Shiori could use the front entrance, but not the kitchen. A hotel server could use the kitchen, but not the head table. An Imperial officer—that black-and-silver men's service uniform—could go anywhere, but the moment I opened my mouth, any genuine Imperial officer would identify me as not one of them within three sentences. Unless. I closed my eyes for two seconds. Unless I didn't open my mouth.

Unless I let that charming little booklet with the slightly problematic example-sentence ordering prepare every word I needed. Unless I put on the binder, put on the wig, put on the men's service uniform, pressed Hoshino Shimo one layer deeper, deep enough that even Ayase Shiori would have to step aside— Deep enough that what remained was only a nameless, young, quiet person who looked like a newly posted Second Lieutenant who hadn't yet learned how to be agreeable, standing in the corner of the banquet hall.

The comm unit on the desk vibrated once. Not a ring. A vibration. The restrained, courteous, fully self-aware kind—the way a trained reptile might tap the glass of its enclosure with its tail to remind you it was still alive. I stopped, looked at the caller ID. No name. Just a system relay code, clean enough to look like it had never been born into human society.

"…Good timing," I said. I picked up the comm unit and connected. No video. Only audio from the other side.

"Remember to eat breakfast." I closed my eyes. Excellent. Colonel Wiesland. I didn't even bother asking how he knew I hadn't started trying on the outfits yet. That kind of question was like asking why space was black. The answer usually only made things worse.

"When I opened the case just now," I said, "I briefly considered throwing the whole thing out the window."

"That's not recommended," Wiesland said, his voice as even as a man with a professional kind of amorality.

"If the contents are damaged, the cost still falls on you."

"So you do care about expense reports."

"I care about procedure. Expense reports are a byproduct." I tossed the short wig back onto the bed and sat on the edge.

"Colonel."

"Mm."

"That Quick Introduction to Imperial. Did you select it personally."

"Yes."

"Why does page seven start with stop, get down, and hands up."

"Practicality." The confidence of that answer was so complete I couldn't find an entry point to argue with it. I was quiet for two seconds. Wiesland didn't push. This was one of the most irritating things about him—he was very good at waiting. Like a hunter waiting for the trap to spring on its own. Like a doctor waiting for the anesthesia to take effect. Like a man who was entirely certain you would eventually do what he wanted, and who had the patience to let you exhaust your temper first.

So I changed the question.

"The false bottom."

"You found it."

"What I'd rather ask is whether you want me to protect Her Highness Hedwig, or personally conduct a large-scale urban renewal project on Lunar City."

"The two are not mutually exclusive." I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because that was exactly the kind of answer he would give, and it was so precisely him that I almost felt reassured. People were sometimes like that—as long as the person across from you was still the familiar kind of bastard, even absurdity could feel organized.

"You sound fairly normal," Wiesland said.

"Is that a compliment."

"It's a status check."

"How moving."

"No need to be moved." I switched the comm unit to my other hand and looked up at the mirror. Still me. Hair undisturbed, expression undisturbed. Only the eyes a little colder than before. Probably because the person on the other end of the line always managed to drop a person's temperature by half a degree.

"Any additional instructions."

"Yes." Wiesland paused.

"Try the binder first, the Imperial language second. Do not reverse the order. If your breathing is off, your pronunciation will follow." I looked at myself in the mirror.

"…You're managing even that."

"If I don't, someone will be managing your body tomorrow." That was entirely logical. Logical enough to make me want to hang up.

"Anything else."

"The men's service uniform—the belt at the second notch. The third is too deliberate. A new Second Lieutenant who looks slightly thin is less conspicuous than one who looks like he's trying too hard."

"I'm seriously beginning to wonder if you've personally worn a Second Lieutenant's uniform."

"I haven't."

"Then how do you know about the second notch."

"Because I have eyes." Silence. Wiesland was quiet too, as if confirming I'd actually taken that in. Then his tone shifted, just slightly.

"Breakfast still needs to happen."

"How much do you care about breakfast."

"An empty stomach makes your hand shake during a salute. Same problem during a kill."

"Thank you for the reminder."

"Also, memorize page eleven of the language booklet first."

"Why page eleven."

"Because page eleven is 'please show your identification.'" I looked down at the booklet on the bed and had a brief impulse to submerge it in hot water and see whether a second volume—How to Politely Infiltrate Enemy Systems—would grow out of it.

"Colonel."

"Mm."

"If I come back alive, I'm going to seriously consider saying something very unpleasant to you."

"That's fine." The reply came fast, as if it had already been scheduled.

"Just pick a time when I'm available." This time I actually laughed. The short kind, where a little air gets out through the nose before the rest. Not pretty. Nothing you'd put in a memoir. But real. Probably because this entire conversation had been constructed out of nonsense, and yet underneath every piece of nonsense was a clearly laid escape route. Not warmth. Something harder to handle than warmth.

The work of someone who had already calculated every choke point in advance, and was pretending he'd just done it in passing. I leaned back against the headboard and let out a breath.

"Understood."

"Good."

"Anything else."

"Yes." Wiesland said.

"Don't wear the short wig like you're trying to look trustworthy." I blinked. Then I looked down at the wig, and finally laughed out loud.

"What exactly is your impression of me."

"Not an impression. A risk assessment."

"Thank you so much."

"You're welcome." A pause.

"Shimo." The hand holding the comm unit stilled, just slightly. From the moment the call connected until now, Colonel Wiesland had used nothing—no surname, no rank, no callsign, no that particular voice he used when pulling up a file. Just my name.

"Do what you know how to do," he said.

"Don't do the extra things you're currently in the mood to add because you're having a bad day." The room was quiet for half a second. I looked at myself in the mirror and slowly sat up straight.

"…Yes, sir."

"Good." The call ended. No farewell. No take care. No extra words. The call was a needle—in, depth measured, confirmed not dead, pulled clean back out. The last human voice in the room was gone. Only the air conditioning. Only the lights. Only me. And the pile on the bed, prepared to divide me into three. I set the comm unit back on the desk and stood.

"…All right." I said it to the air.

"Start with the least annoying one." The first set was Ayase Shiori. Attaché Trainee. Female. Young. Trained. Polite. No temper. The last one was the hardest. I put on the attaché uniform, fastened the collar, smoothed the cuffs, and fitted the long wig. Low ponytail, side-parted, tucked cleanly behind the ears, a little hair at the temples but not so much that it looked like my natural habit.

Ayase could be presentable—should be, in fact, because protocol systems liked young people who looked harmless and composed. But Ayase could not carry my particular I have no interest in anyone today outline. I stood in front of the mirror and checked my posture first. Shoulders not too loose. Chin up slightly. Not arrogance. Education. Not vigilance. Correctness.

I put my hands behind my back and tried to stand like someone who would be stopped in an embassy corridor by a Senpai colleague and reply immediately, Yes, of course. Three seconds later, I was the first to break.

"… Exhausting." I looked at the person in the mirror—cleaner than usual, more patient than usual, more like someone who could sleep properly—and felt, sincerely, that this set was heavier than any gun. Not the fabric. The persona. The hardest thing about wearing Ayase Shiori was never the wig or the ID. It was that all the unnecessary edges had to be hidden. She couldn't look at people first; she had to look at protocol first. She couldn't be impatient first; she had to smile first.

She couldn't even obviously dislike anyone, because the most valuable thing about an attaché trainee was that she could be placed in any inconvenient situation and look like she had always belonged there. Put plainly: a high-grade, single-use consumable. I let my eyes drop and then come back up. No. That one was too much like me. I tried again. Eyes up first, then gaze down. Settle the breath, then the shoulders. Press the urge to comment down into the stomach.

The person in the mirror finally looked more acceptable. Not a different person. Still me. Just me with enough trimmed away to pass through a checkpoint under Ayase Shiori's name.

"Good morning." I said it to the mirror. Voice not too low, not too flat. Polite, but not sweet. Clear, not familiar.

"Galactic Federation Embassy, Lunar City Copernicus. Attaché Trainee, Ayase Shiori." A small pause, a slight nod.

"Pleased to meet you." Good. Even I felt like maintaining a polite distance from her. That was exactly right. I took the set off and hung it neatly, like returning a borrowed identity to its rack. The second set was the hotel server. This one looked the simplest. It was quieter to wear than expected. White shirt, black vest, narrow tie, trousers, low heels—the stride naturally shortened.

The wig didn't need to be elaborate, just clean: low side ponytail, a few strands loose at the ears, like someone too busy to check the mirror again but busy in a professional way. I borrowed the small tray from the room's mini-bar—empty, just enough to serve as a prop—and stood in front of the mirror. This time, the first thing to go was presence. Not looking down. Not shrinking. Not making yourself smaller. But turning down every signal that said I am here. Eyes couldn't land directly on faces.

Footsteps couldn't arrive before the space did. Wrists light. Turning radius generous, like always ready to step aside. I picked up the tray and walked two steps forward, then stopped. The person in the mirror was good. Almost too good. The kind of server who could pass you three times and leave no impression. That was a compliment. For this identity, that was the highest possible rating. I thought for a moment and adjusted slightly. The mouth couldn't be entirely neutral.

Entirely neutral looked like someone waiting for someone to die. There needed to be a very faint, very professional curve at the corners, like someone always ready to say excuse me, coming through. I tried it once.

"Excuse me, coming through." Too much of my usual impatient version. Again.

"Excuse me, coming through." That worked. Lighter. Thinner. The kind of sentence nobody would actually remember. I looked at the person in the mirror holding the tray and thought of something. If Her Highness Hedwig saw this, she would probably frown first, then run that particular unhappy and precise gaze from the ends of my hair down to the tips of my shoes, and conclude: not quite a real server. Too clean. … Infuriating.

People who could see through things that directly were always inconvenient wherever you put them. I set down the tray and loosened the tie. This set worked. It worked well. Like a shadow. Like background. Like a thin line that could slip through any gap without a sound, as long as it didn't speak. It just couldn't reach the head table, or the center of power. It was for listening, not speaking; for approaching, not standing at the front. This was the identity for laying groundwork, not for finishing things.

I hung the server uniform neatly too. What remained on the bed was the most unreasonable set of the three. Black base, silver trim. Men's cut. Imperial military. I looked at the uniform for a moment, then picked up the binder.

"… Let's go." I said it to the binder. Nobody answered. Of course not. Wearing a binder was never romantic. Nobody who actually needed one had the bandwidth to turn it into something symbolic or poetic or meaningful. It was fabric, straps, pressure, and the violence of redistributing breath. I put it on, adjusted the position, tightened, secured. First breath: not full. Second: not full either. Third: the body started to learn. Once the chest was flattened, even the shoulder line changed. Not an illusion.

The body was always an inconvenient machine—change one part and the others surrendered in sequence. The back straightened on its own. The waist lost some of its softness. Even the posture became more upright, more rigid, more like a shape that institutions recognized. I raised a hand and touched the space below my collarbone. Empty. Not that the body wasn't there. The body had been muted. I put on the shirt, then the Imperial service uniform, piece by piece. Buttons to the top, collar flush against the throat.

Belt at the second notch, as Wiesland had said. Exactly right. Infuriatingly right. Then the wig. In my hand it had still seemed faintly absurd. Once it was on, the joke disappeared. Because it was too good. By the time I pressed the hairline down, smoothed the sideburns flat, and tucked away the softness at the forehead that had no business being there, the person in the mirror had a kind of completion I didn't want to acknowledge. Young. Lean. Quiet.

Outline too clean to be a veteran, but exactly like someone who'd just been transferred from an academy or a headquarters posting into the field, and hadn't yet learned how to make people like them. Male. At least, that was what the system would conclude. I looked at the person in the mirror and slowly stood straight. The hardest part of this set was never putting it on.

It was that once you put it on, you had to accept something: this empire had constructed an entire system that only granted you passage when you looked sufficiently like a man. Did I resent it? Of course. Was there something almost interesting about it? In a specific way, yes. An empire that banned women from military service, ultimately needing a woman in men's dress to clean up the worst of its business. If this system had a face, it would've slapped itself raw by now. I stared at the mirror for a long time.

Not looking at Ayase. Not looking at someone else. Looking at how much of Hoshino Shimo remained after being compressed into this shape. The answer: enough. Enough to remember who I was. Enough to remember this uniform was a tool. Enough to remember that the one who actually needed to do the work wasn't the Imperial crest on the chest, or the rank on the ID, but the person inside who wasn't dead yet. I picked up the Quick Introduction to Imperial from the desk and turned to page eleven.

Please show your identification. I read it aloud, following the phonetics. Again. Third time, shorter, flatter, the tone of someone who had no interest in repeating themselves.

"Bitte zeigen Sie Ihren Ausweis." Not enough. I dropped the voice another notch, clipped the ending.

"Bitte zeigen Sie Ihren Ausweis." That worked. Next line.

"Meldung: Der Gang ist frei." First attempt: too much like reciting. Second: too much like pretending not to recite. Third: I stripped the excess air and kept only the necessary syllables.

"Meldung: Der Gang ist frei." The young Second Lieutenant in the mirror finally looked like someone who might receive a nod and not a second glance. I closed the booklet and set it on the bedside table. Then I raised my hand in a salute. Angle not too wide. Hand steady. An empty stomach makes the hand shake. Wiesland had just said so. Infuriating, that he'd already claimed that line before I could use it myself. I lowered my hand and saluted again. Second time, more natural. Third, more economical. Good.

If someone knocked on the door right now, I was confident I could decide in three seconds whether to answer as Ayase Shiori, as a hotel server, or as this quiet-looking Imperial Second Lieutenant. That was enough. A person didn't need to live all three versions simultaneously—only needed to know, before the door opened, which one was going out first. I touched the stiff collar at my throat and looked at the mirror once more.

"… Don't wear the short wig like you're trying to look trustworthy." I said it to the person in the mirror. The person in the mirror didn't answer. But they didn't look trustworthy. I arranged the hat, wig, booklet, ID, and three uniforms in order of use. Ayase Shiori on the left, server on the right, Imperial Second Lieutenant at the front. Not because I liked the last one best, but because the most dangerous thing should be within the first reach of the hand. I stepped back and looked at the room one more time.

The clothes were clothes. The wigs were wigs. The gun was a gun. The explosives were explosives. The names were names. None of them were me. But starting tonight, I would have to wear each of them, one at a time, as if they were. I reached over and turned off the mirror light, leaving only the main room lamp. The reflection in the mirror immediately lost definition, edges going soft. Good. A face that was too clear was never an advantage in an infiltration.

I glanced at the time, then at the room service menu on the desk, and finally picked it up.

"…Fine." I admitted it.

"Breakfast first."