Chapter 23 Part 7

Sal made his way up the path, and upon reaching the door was taken aback when it flew open unprompted. He couldn't see anyone, but he clearly heard a voice say "Come in young man, come in!"

Sal patted his knife. The voice chimed again, "You won't need your antique blade, young man. I'm not part of Inner Sanctum."

Whoever this guy was, he might be the most talented hacker Sal had ever met. Sal had never made any of his background accessible via his interface, but he was sure that if someone wanted to dig enough one could piece together his past form the holonosphere--much as Inner Sanctum had done with their time scrubbing mechanisms to locate him. Most of the time, however, the technology to do that was limited to big players in the holonosphere.

Sal stepped across the threshold and tried to let his eyes adjust. As the darkness began to fade into shapes and outlines, Sal felt as though he had stepped into some kind of museum. There were bits and piece of things from all sorts of ages--things Sal didn't even recognize. He knew some of them from the images he had seen of them on the holonsophere, but the vast majority of the stuff was far beyond his ability to even begin to label.

As Sal was taking this scene in, a man appeared before him., wearing what appeared to be a suit jacket and a fedora. He was of above average height, and his composure made it hard to tell whether he was young or old. He did not seem as spry as a young person, but he did not bend his back as the old do. When his face came into the light, it appeared to be the face of a man in his 50s. The man extended his hand.

"A pleasure to meet you, Sal Grimone. I see you took my advice and ran. I regret that you had to experience that unfortunate situation with that man before you arrived. Undertown is not inhabited by people with civility through and through."

"Who the hell are you?" Sal snapped.

"Who the hell am I? I think a better question for you to be asking in this moment is who the hell YOU ARE? Are you Sal the orphan or Sal the talented deceiver, or Sal the deceived?" the man let a wry smile cross his lips as he posed the last question.

Sal bristled. "Look, Mr. I don't know who you are, or what you are, but I'm going to bet you bleed, and if you mean me any harm, I intend to prove my theory."

"Ha! HA! This is the thanks I GET! I hold an Inner Sanctum agent for you to get away, you get here and you threaten to draw my blood? What makes you think, young Sal, that if I so desired it you would move your hand one inch?"