I’d just sat down at my desk when I got a call through the AIphone embedded in my head. I sub-vocalized my acceptance of the summons and headed out at a run to the nearest transport nexus. I was on my way to back up an extraction.

“Sir,” the Corporal at the portal said, stopping me, “Don’t you need to be in armor? Or, at least, some heavier clothing?”

I looked down at myself, and, yeah, he was right. New York City in mid-winter was not the place to materialize wearing short-sleeves. I nodded and headed for the local transient armor locker.

The delay was, for the most part, required, and I soon was back in the transport room where I was flashed to the surface, the armor’s own AI telling me about its readiness to support me. I didn’t even think about the BFG tucked below one arm or the stingers in both gauntlets, having been through a refresher just a week before.

Damn, this was a symbolic pick-up, and, truly, the dress code of all of the people was serious cold-weather gear, what with the breeze blowing through the hall on Ellis Island.

My suit scanned the environment and gave me a summary of the physical situation which allowed me to know where the heavy weapons team was waiting, in the Bengal, doing a figure eight around both Ellis and Bledsoe islands. This had to be giving the people on the passing ferry boats quite a view.

I walked up to the Lieutenant in charge and asked “So, what do you have for me?”

“I’ll bring you over to him ... it’s a weird one, sir. The card is complaining that there’s something wrong with the holder.”

This was a new one on me, so, nodding, I followed her over to the volunteer. I also spent a couple of seconds in armor envy given her graceful movement despite the encumbrance. I swore she could have done ballet in it.

When this pickup was over, I reminded the AI, I was going to bump up my frequency of armor exercises.

I was led to a young man, about twenty, and I held out my hand for his card. He’d already gathered four women and two men around him, implying that he was an eight.

Unless counterfeiting techniques had improved enormously, this card was the real thing. The embedded nanos integrated with a tiny AI embedded on the “smart” card was telling me that it hadn’t been in contact with the person it was coded for in over a year. The card was telling me, just like it had told the Lieutenant, that something was terribly wrong.

Either this fellow’s card had somehow gotten confused, something I thought unlikely, or he wasn’t the person the card described, no matter how well the photo matched. No wonder the woman in charge of the pickup had called for my help! Being the G-2 leading the counterfeit trace teams, she’d wanted someone up the food-chain from herself to deal with this anomaly.

The main AI I was talking to— and you don’t have to subvocalize when you’re inside armor— couldn’t make up its mind, so it left the decision up to me, and I’d need to use my gut instinct.

Realize, for a moment, that as an intelligence analyst, I really do not like anomalies. I don’t like reminders that I don’t understand something, and, in this case, I wasn’t even sure, yet, what kind of questions to ask. I told the Lieutenant that she should transport him to the isolation unit and I’d have a talk with him— and his concubines— there.

In order to disturb the tranquility of this subject, I did wait until the next morning to arrive at the isolation unit. I knew he would be softened up a bit given that we were handling him differently.

Now, realize, one thing most volunteers avoid being is “unpleasantly arrogant”. Add to this that the two men he’d apparently chosen weren’t exactly cowed, either, setting off additional alarms with additional anomalies.