Six months earlier …
“C’mon”, a young man groaned as he read the computer meter and saw how long he’d have to wait until his request was processed.
He’d lived by the name ‘Mr. Kite’, at least within some circles, for years. If pressed, he’d have a hard time remembering his given name, but he could tell you hundreds of other names he’d used to hide his true identity.
As he sat glaring at the monitor, Kite tried to make it go faster by giving it the evil eye. He might have been mistaken for any other nine-to-fiver, wearing a white shirt, crumpled black tie and a large olive-coloured jacket. Only his age, slightly higher than the rest of the cubicle-crowd that surrounded him, would have been an alert to anyone that was actually paying attention to what he was doing.