Kiko-Lyn applies skin dye makeup and prosthetics to make her legs and spine appear only partially healed from a traumatic injury.  Above her pelvis she adds an electronic switchable nerve block from the apartment’s first aid station. Then she bolts on an exoskeleton of silicon carbide nanoparticle-infused magnesium zinc alloy. She prints some fake attached webbing to make the exoskeleton look like cybernetic leg braces that allow a paraplegic to walk. In reality this exoskeleton allows her to move very fast and bounce high during her Flow Warrior shows. She loads false data to her medical data insert.  The program is accurate except it exaggerates an injury received doing parkour. The accident is in the public data record, and caused her a temporary need for a medical exoskeleton. But the temp part is not public, so her exoskeleton travel license is real, and a fake paraplegic disability should be credible. She needs to look vulnerable but be super parkour.

Kiko-Lyn sends out info agent spiders to trail the web for information on Jonathon and International Widget. Most of his data is not publicly available.  Jonathon keeps a scrubbed information footprint on the public web. Nevertheless, a few hours later a cloud-based text and video analytics program flags a citizen advocate blogger with axes to grind on exploitative businesses. This blogger has captured frequent comings and goings of Jonathon Xavier Blake, General Manager International Widget, in Hong Kong for meetings with factory representatives of mainland businesses suspected of using child labor. A cross check of publicly available flight manifests and seminar registrations show many more Hong Kong trips, and longer stays than these surreptitiously documented meetings.  Could this be a location for Jonathon’s mistress or an unofficial residence?  Jonathon’s main residence of record in the Cayman Islands is unassailable. Turning up nothing better, Kiko-Lyn is off to Hong Kong. She buys a ticket with her underground funds.  This bank account is in her name and not hidden; it is just that none of the adults in her life ever thought to look for it.

Traveling to Honk Kong, Kiko-Lyn has texted back and forth with the citizen blogger Dongjing “Dawn” and come to see her as trill₄. Dawn sets up a meeting for lunch. Each appears in public as their obscured YouTube identity and dressed for the meeting as their online persona. Kiko-Lyn is happy to make a new media sister and everything she learns of International Widget just amps up her desire to Skunk them. Kiko-Lyn reviews pictures Dawn took that show Jonathon’s employees traveling to and from Tsuen Wan New Town via private car, always using the same town car company.

The MTR train ride is over some beautiful mountain passes through parkland. Kiko-Lyn downloads the car company app and requests passage to “the offices of International Widget.” Expecting as a regular stop, it will be in their database. It’s a long shot, and also flagging someone’s attention is her goal. Picked up at Tsuen Wan Station, she is delivered to a nondescript office building in the warehouse district.

Capture

Kiko-Lyn enters the building, sees no English signage, and uses translation software to scan for a directory showing for International Widget. A big security guard grabs at her. She has her staff in "glass rod configuration" and the chromophores swirl in pastel blues and greens.  It is a distraction. As a hood encloses her head, Kiko-Lyn keys her staff to "Scatter, Hide, Follow, Record."  She has pre-selected Jorge’s net address for the flock’s media outbound queue.  She drops her staff which seems to shatter on the floor. In reality, the staff disassembles into the dragonflies of her swarm, releasing their hold to the staff shape by rapidly unbraiding diamond-hard legs.

Behind her she hears, “Poor snowflake, broke your expensive toy” and a dark chuckle. Kiko could twist away and throw her mugger using Aikido, but her objective is to seem helpless and get caught.  This should gain her entry to Jonathon’s lair. Self-justifying allowing herself to be captured, How else could she locate incriminating evidence on Jonathon? Plus video of this capture should motivate Jorge to get involved.  She fakes a struggle to draw attention from her dropped staff handle. It is deploying legs and climbing up her calf where it will configure to mimic a controller of her fake leg braces.  In the hood, the Googgles^TM gas alarm triggers and her filter is ripped from her nose.  Thinking I’m gonna be #rekt₅, Kiko-Lyn falls unconscious.  As Kiko-Lyn is carried away, her swarm deploys camouflage and follows the homing beacon in her staff handle.

Later, when he gets the video mails of Kiko-Lyn’s capture, Jorge’s invectives startle even his hardcore staff.  As video fragments from the swarm trickle in, they allow Jorge to follow her transport during the kidnap, and provide coordinates of her eventual location. He knows that despite Rachael’s earlier restrictions, he must act.

Kiko-Lyn wakes up starfish₆ in a room furnished as a 19^th century cabinet of curiosities. She is strapped into an ancient dental chair, but her "paralyzed legs" are not latched to the chairs stirrups. Her exoskeleton is off to the side of the room, being prepped for an empty display shelf. Displayed around the room in wooden and glass trophy cases are mounted specimen skeleton bones which all show breaks from bullets, blades and trauma. Many are displayed with the weapon that made the injury, newspaper clippings and exhibit description cards.  Two walls are historical oddities, but one wall is contemporary.  This is necrophobia₇ disturbing. Adjoining the historical collection are modern cases with 3D relief prints and looping animated GIFs. Many are of the same man bearing guns, crossbows, swords and axes. Not all the mounted injuries are of game animals.  Human tibia with bullet holes, femurs sliced in two, knife in ribs, and several crushed sculls are given prominent display. Drakeface₈, she thinks, This guy is sick sick sick. I’m going to make a mint in selfiecidal₉ residuals. Change of plan; best not to wait for Jonathon, who looks to enact these predatory interests on her. She triggers the video recorders built into her Googgles^TM and exoskeleton. Game on. She quotes Jorge, "Release, reconnoiter, evade, sabotage, escape."