Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Spy who is getting very tired of overhearing the guards' problems
You have the guard patrol routes memorised. Their shift changes. Camera coverage angles. Alarm call point locations, response times, response protocol. You have knockout darts, computer taps, stun baton, backup pistol. You are lethal hand-to-hand, and a silent phantom at infiltration.
You've been stuck in this three-minute corridor traversal for forty minutes because the guards have also noticed that nobody can see what happens back here, and they've stopped mid-patrol to empty their flask of coffee and vape instead of wearing out their boot soles. Your ass is cold and numb from sitting in the dark corner behind this barrel.
"—So my brother-in-law, right, the poor bastard married to Stella. He got some of those implant sunglasses, right? The fancy zhoom-zhoom self-retracting ones? Got a bonus at work and dropped, like, all of it on 'em without telling her. Caught hell, but what was she gonna do, pull 'em out of his face and demand a refund?"
The other guard makes an appropriate guy was asking for it, but ouch noise.
"Loved 'em. Loved the fuckin' things. You'd be talking to him and in the middle of the conversation vwip! like, quick enough to make you jump. And he'd start laughing, right? Thought it was real funny. Any time he wants someone to know they're boring or he doesn't wanna talk to 'em: vwip! Only now this lawyer gets in touch about a class action, right? Because the lenses retract into the sides of your face, and they're rimless, so they're held onto the implant with, like, a pin drilled through the corner of the lens. But on a bunch of these, something's fucked up? People extend 'em, vwip! and the lens comes off the pin and keeps going, slices their nose off. Or they retract 'em and the lens comes off at the other end, smashes inside the implant, eye fulla shards."
"Jeez."
"So he decides, okay, better stop using 'em. Doesn't want 'em taken out in case he misses out on a settlement, but he'll just keep 'em where they are for ever, right? Only they're extended over his eyes when he first takes the call."
"So he looks like a tool?"
"C'mon, he's in Stella's league, he always looked like a tool. No, he calls me, middle of Monday night, real upset. Says Stella's throwing a shit fit about eye contact and if he won't retract 'em and look her in the eye she's taking her stuff and going to Ma's."
The other guard repeats his guy was asking for it, but noise, more emphatically.
"And then my sister grabs the phone and starts screaming that he won't look her in the eye and he'd rather retract from inside his wife than retract his shades and it's, you know—"
"This is your sister."
"It's my sister! So I say, right, I say I don't need to hear about the guy in my sister, you know? I never asked for this. So she screams at me, too, and hangs up. Heard something from Ma about she wants a divorce."
There's a bit of a silence.
"Don't you have that thing—"
"Big family get-together at Ma's house next week, yeah. That'll be real fuckin' fun."
You could probably get both of them with one gas grenade.