Eye Spy [Lyante & Heather]

“I find it’s the fastest way to deal with people, as I don’t have much time,” Lyante said, following the quirky girl to her workbench. Lyante appreciated a good pair of googles as she sized up the girl, her nonchalant attitude about the gun as well as her prosthetic hand convinced Lyante she had made the right choice in choosing this shop.


She had shown she wasn’t easily intimidated and the elegant, yet functional design of the hand was exactly what she was looking for in hers. “Your Customer Service Bot records what I say, something I’d like to avoid.” Lyante was already using her spider droid to shield her doings from the surrounding cameras most of the time, but she didn’t want to overdo it or she might as well wear a great big sign saying she was doing secret stuff. Not that she was doing anything illegal, but secrets were more lethal that any weapon in Novus, especially in her line of work.


“I’ve chosen this shop because of its reputation for excellence. I also want it done it the utmost secrecy, I suspect that’s quite a common request. Any surcharge for this service will not pose a problem.” Lyante skipped all the pleasantries and got down to business fast.


“I need a prosthetic that fits in here.” Slowly she slipped her goggles down, letting them hang around her neck and carefully swept away her bang, revealing her left eye missing, a small, strange looking scar dividing her eyebrow in two. “And I want you to fit all this,” Lyante placed the stack of tech specs on the table, “into the prosthetic.”


“Sound like a challenge?” Lyante said, rummaging around in the pouch sewn in her pants. Not really waiting for an answer she fished what appeared to be a glass eye from her pocket and placed it on the counter. “For reference.” A few seconds later she placed a money chip on the table. Lyante thought the price was fair, considering it was double what a whole weaponized arm would cost, but then again, she was buying silence along with the prosthetic.


Lyante gave the shop owner her most charming smile out of habit, but somehow she thought that it would have little effect on this woman. “Go over the tech specs for a minute if you please and let me know if you’re up for the task.” Lyante was already fingering the other money chip in her pocket in case she would get declined. It wasn’t as much as her first chip, but would be enough to buy the shopkeeper’s silence.

Lyante smiled, perhaps a little bit too wide, as her admiration of this woman grew. She obviously had a good eye for situations and she knew how to play ball, a rare quality even within the upper class, and one that Lyante knew to appreciate. As the shop owner casually demanded her CS droid to delete the past five minutes and continued to tell her it was doable, the raven-haired secret agent found herself almost squeaking with glee at how smooth this whole thing went. This time, she might not have to make people disappear.


She raised an eyebrow (her good one) at the waver she apparently had to sign. This girl thinks ahead, Lyante thought as she went over her options. Clearly this woman not only had the expertise and the equipment Lyante needed for this project, but enough savviness to make her…valuable for future escapades. She made a mental note of checking each circuit in the end product for hidden code or ‘failsafe’ bombs or what not. The last thing she wanted to do is shoving a miniature bomb in her eye socket.


“You got yourself a deal,” Lyante cooed, I can always make the document disappear, she thought, it doesn’t state what she is building for me, so I can claim I had to have a quick repair for my goggles, they got me on camera walking up and down the street anyway. Giving the girl a nod, she took out a pen and signed her name on the document, using her real name, less things to remember and it seemed this woman couldn’t care less who Lyante was.


“Eye see what you did there,” Lyante punned back as she signed, getting the administrative portion of this transaction out of the way. Then, she turned to the specs, carefully going over each requirement for the eye with Heather. Lyante couldn’t imagine the girl in front of her not knowing what she meant, still she elaborated on every line, detailing the parts she wanted and telling her that if she couldn’t get a part, she herself would supply it, after all, her contacts covered a lot more supply routes (legal and illegal). Although...she couldn’t be sure…this woman was something special after all.


After quite some time discussing technology, Lyante excused herself. “It seems we have run out of pages and I have run out of time. I’ll be back in one week’s time.” Lyante gave her a small appreciative nod as she put the other credit chip down on the bench. “Try and bump it to the top of the old priority list, if you can.”



Being guided to the exit by the overly chipper robots, she made her way to her next assignment, having a good feeling about the project, excited by the prospect of once again having depth perception without her goggles. First she’d complete herself again, then she’d take her revenge. After that, maybe she’d buy herself some strawberry cheesecake. To say she couldn’t wait for the week to fly by was an understatement.

Lyante cursed, as she hurried through the city. She’d been stuck all day with an assignment nobody wanted and had to report her findings to a briefing room that didn’t care. What use could staking out possible black market locations possibly have? Even if you were so unfathomably lucky as to have it show up, you wouldn’t report it, you’d just browse and take a note of its shopkeepers, building a larger network. For now, she had to put up with this convoluted sham of an assignment, even if it meant she was late for a much more pleasant meeting.


Finally, the now familiar shop came into view and Lyante stopped her running to catch her breath, the last thing she wanted is for Heather to think she was too eager. As she calmed down, she approached the shop, getting more and more excited as she knocked on one of closed garage doors. Immediately she heard the C.S. bot approach, its cheery message playing, asking if it could help her.



Lyante ignored it, knowing whatever she would say would only get recorded and deleted afterward. She made her way to the back, where she knew the talented engineer would be. Announcing her arrival with a number of knocks in the door, she indeed found the woman where she had left her last time.

Greeting the goggled girl, Lyante couldn’t help but smile, looking at the workbench, the pages of technical specs no longer a neat pile; checks were placed in different colors to keep tabs on what was and what hadn’t been implemented during various stages of design and constructions. She saw the eye she had given the woman as a reference nearly dissected, measured again and again to get every detail right.


And there, in the center of the bench, held in a containment field to keep dirt out, floated the eye. Her sketches and tech specs made reality. Lyante fished the sheet with the overview of features from the stack, finding all of her wished checked…and a bunch of other things added.


“My word,” Lyante said, “you have been busy.” She gave the woman an approving smile, and patiently waited for the engineer to present her work, not about to break the cardinal rule of never touching an engineer’s work before said engineer let you. But even without touching it, she could already see the careful detail and creative genius that constituted this eye. She couldn’t wait to pop it in, but knew better than to connect to strange tech in a garage where no one could see what was going on and where no one would miss her. But that’s what the spider robot was for; he’d run an entire diagnostic of the eye, telling Lyante all she needed to know before trying it out.


“So, let’s see what your genius has wrought.”

Lyante would be amused by the pacing engineer in front of her, waving her finger, nearly tripping over her words as she spoke if she wasn’t so damn impressed. Sure she knew that it would be possible to put that many features into such a small package, but it would have taken her weeks to figure out placement, let alone beginning to know where to start with the coding.


Lyante’s grin now occupied the lower half of her face as Heather stepped aside, the universal signal between scientists to let the other judge their work more closely. “It looks beautiful…” Lyante gasped, nearly forgetting her precautions. Just before disturbing the field the eye was floating in, Lyante set her hand on the table instead. From her pocket, the sleek robotic robot crawled up her side, over her shoulder and down her arm to approach the eye.


“Can’t be too careful,” Lyante smiled, meaning no offense. Besides, as savvy as this engineer was in the ways of Novus, she hardly thought it would come across as such. After the spider did its initial scan, Lyante carefully grabbed the eye from the field, connecting it with the spider, who let her know everything checked out.


Nearly shaking with anticipation, Lyante grabbed a small cloth and container from her pocket. Pouring the liquid on the cloth, she began polishing the eye. Its perfectly smooth surface clean, Lyante let out a big sigh, once again letting the goggles slide down her head, resting it on her collarbone as she connected the eye with her extension port. It took a moment to calibrate, imprinting Lyante’s NUIP as its master. When it was done, Lyante disconnected it, closed the port and gave the eye another polish.


“It’s been so long,” Lyante softly said, more to herself than to anyone else. Almost ceremoniously, she swept her bang away, pinning it back with a rather childish looking bobby pin. The pin was small and looked old, the decorative star had since long lost its luster and color, and looked worn out. Turning away suddenly, as if she had just realized Heather was still there, Lyante slid the eye into its socket. Closing her eyes, for a few seconds, she opened them back up, staring at herself in the small mirror on the garage’s wall.


Momentarily losing her composure, tears welled up from her eyes. “I can finally wear my hair back again…” she stuttered in amazement, exclaiming the first thing she could think of. Her field of view suddenly doubling, she was a little disoriented and the blurred vision due to her tears wasn’t helping much either.



A minute passed with Lyante in front of the mirror, staring at the side of her face she rarely saw. Tears stopped and turned into a smile as she ran through the color program, changing her eye color for a while. “Thank you,” Lyante said as she turned around. They were the two most sincere words she had spoken in a long time.


Regaining her composure, she gave Heather a more mischievous smile as she took out her gun. Her other hand fished something out of her pocket that she flicked up in the air, away from her, vaporizing it seconds later with the gun. “That reticle mode is quite ingenious,” she smiled, holstering her gun again.

Lyante briefly went through the other modes, more and more impressed with what this woman had done in such a little time. “Color me impressed,” Lyante addressed Heather while changing the eye color, knowing the shopkeeper appreciated a pun now and then. “It’s a work of beauty,” she continued, “I don’t think I…anybody could have done it better.”


“The reticle mode is quite impressive…could there be a possibility to have the eye overlay my sight with other information as well? Maybe if I connect with another more…spruced up gear, like my goggles?”