Table twelve sat near the glass, directly beneath a suspended light fixture shaped like a branding iron spelling out BS in glowing serif. Four guests, two gray suits that cost more than rent does for a year. One woman wore gold lattice optics so thin they looked tattooed directly on her face, the lenses cycled through slow rotations of deep colors. The woman beside her had a left arm sleeved in synthetic skin that caught the restaurant lights and mirrored them every time they struck a certain way. A champagne-colored metal articulated each joint.
She was swirling a wine glass in a slow, full rotation. A lavender liquid was glistening as it twirled around.
Merit tipped the oversized foam prop hat, the weight of it threatening to slide off his forehead. "Howdy." He delivered the line with the dead-eyed flatness of a man reading a ransom note.
The woman with the arm looked up first.
"Can you tell the kitchen we would like the venison."
"It's actually not served on Tues—"
"I know." She smiled slightly at him. As if it were mandatory.
"I'll go tell them." Merit turned to go.
"She's doing the ladder after this?" one of the women said.
Merit found a reason to exist around a nearby chair, adjusting a napkin that didn't need it. The pristine digital sky was now slightly stuttering, the Ladder started to look like it had been split horizontally. For a moment the real rot of the street leaked in through pixelated windows until it reverted back to "normal".
The guests hardly noticed the glitch. "Houston confirmed the guest book." One of the men replied, his eyes moved in a perfect, rhythmic sweep across the empty air in front of him. "Even Calderon's been approved. Security is adding tighter controls, given the scale."
Merit finished with the napkin.
Calderon.
Calderon, who had been a hacker before he became a journalist, and a journalist before he became a missing person. A lot of people had gone missing recently, but Calderon had direct connections to getting the dumpthis.sh leak out publicly before he vanished.
Merit ducked into the kitchen and set the tray down on the nearest surface. Calderon wasn't missing. He was a special guest. The man who had once bled ink and sweat to expose the system was now its VIP.