[center]Sijm Cafe, Little Tripantos, Fortitude City[/Center]

The cafe was a dim, crowded place, thick with the mingled smells of roasting meat, cooking oil, and incense from a small shrine to the Little Sisters occupying a corner next to the kitchen. 

"Have you tried the noodles here?" asked the doctor, flashing a bright smile full of big, square teeth. "Delicious. Gods only know how they cook the pork- if it even is pork- but it is [i]something[/i] good."

"I haven't," said Mason, frowning across the table at his two interlocutors. The doctor was a big man, slabs of muscle sliding beneath a superficial layer of fat. Well fed, but certainly not going soft underneath that white silk suit. The lawyer, Sloan, was the doctor's opposite: sallow, thin and hunched. He wore a dark suit as cheap as the doctor's was expensive, and cradled a hand rolled smoke of some spicy blend in one yellowed hand. He sat there smoking and saying nothing.

"Noodles for him! Pork!" the doctor shouted at a passing waiter, thumping the table with one meaty hand and pointing at Mason with the other. Dishware rattled. He chuckled, silver eyes glittering in the restaurant's dim light.

"I didn't come here for the noodles."

"All business Mason. All the time." the Doctor said, shaking his bald head, "It's not good for a man. A man needs to take the time to enjoy life. Feed the soul. Right Sloan?"

The lawyer shrugged, his muddy eyes drifting from his untouched food to Mason and back again. 

"Whatever you say." Sloan's voice trembled as though he suffered from some infirmity or deep sadness. He sounded on the verge of tears. Mason knew better. Sloan wasn't sick and he wasn't sad. Behind the lawyer's sallow, wasted exterior lurked a keen and vicious intelligence.

"Whatever I say, Sloan," said the Doctor, stroking his grey-fringed goatee like a man pondering some sublime mystery, "Whatever I say. Well, what do I say to Mason here? What is there to say?"

"You could start by asking what the Bureau is going to do about whoever is interrupting our shipments. This  mysterious flechette gun that seems to never turn up at any crime scene."

"I could," said the Doctor, slurping his noodles and nodding, "I could. Or I could ask why our friend hasn't bothered to inform us about the ship churning towards the docks, even as we speak."

Special Agent Mason Bags smirked, "You MVS people think that just because you do us a few favors you have a right to know everything?"

"Rights?" said the Doctor, shrugging, "What are rights, anyway? Fictions, I think- though occasionally useful ones for Sloan here to throw around in front of the other lawyers. I'm talking about realities, Mason. The reality is your organization is in over its head with whatever is busy chugging towards these shores."

"Oh?" asked Mason, "And is a stern talking-to from some overeducated corporate thugs going to help us do our jobs?"

The Doctor wiped his mouth and threw the soiled napkin on the table. He was grinning.

"We [i]are[/i] going to help you Mason." said the Doctor, "We are going to help you."

Sloan produced a tablet from a slim black valise and pushed it across the table to the bureau agent. He glanced at the figures flashing across its tinted screen. 

Mason's eyes widened. "Where did you get this?"

"What's important, Mason," said the Doctor, "is where [i]he[/i] is. And what you're going to do about it."