At the end of the day, Adrian found himself in a familiar place. He was tired from a long day on the job, worn out by Fraser's constant presence, annoyed at the damned dog that kept shedding in his car, and still had a full day's worth of work to do before morning.

The note he'd gotten from Turnbull during their scheduled meeting left Adrian with quite a bit of work to do. When he got home, however, he put it off in favor of a nice, hot shower and a bowl of something soupy he'd pulled out of the freezer. It tasted vaguely stew-like, and not spoilt, so he ate it absently whilst reading over the newspaper.

Afterwards, Adrian pushed away pleasant thoughts of sleep and instead unearthed his computer. The laptop had caused Adrian no end to worry, especially when Fraser had broken into his place and gone poking around. Fortunately, the thing was well-hidden and nearly impossible to access.

Adrian checked his email; as usual CIS had sent him a reminder to not miss his appointments. He couldn't help but be amused that CIS used so much technology but he still got his assignments the old-fashioned way. A little cloak-and-dagger, sneaking around like James Bond with bad hair--if his hair could be called worse than any of the Bonds' plastic coifs.

When he could put it off no longer, Adrian slipped out of his apartment to check on some preliminary information regarding the upcoming job. The information he'd gotten so far left quite a few gaping holes in the picture he needed to adequately set up the operation--namely, who was on what payroll and what they were doing for the money. The only information CIS had given him was vague, and he needed more than that.

Adrian's first stop was predictable; one of the three people specifically named in his assignment was officially--and legally--employed at an international business consulting firm located downtown. The cover was just obvious enough to make sense--hiding in plain sight. After all, a guy specializing in setting up Canadian-American business partnerships could only be expected to have a great deal of contact and travel time in both countries.

The fact that the man's usage of a certain travel agency was pure coincidence... or not. Both he and the travel agency owner had been on the CIS watchlist for some time, but it was only recently that the organization had nailed down the business partnership.

Adrian parked a few blocks from the consulting firm's offices and walked back up the street, casually avoiding other passers-by. It was the waning hours of the business-to-pleasure changeover in pedestrian traffic, leaving him an unholy mixture of self-absorbed businessmen and tarted up hopefuls to navigate.

A cursory glance at the consulting firm's security setup soon turned into a detailed survey as Adrian realized that the building had recently improved its equipment. Silently cursing the enterprising nature of up-and-coming security firms, he set about disengaging a bevy of electronic monitoring devices. It just wouldn't do for one of Chicago's finest to get caught dallying about in the offices of a respected international business.

Once inside the offices proper, Adrian began checking through the few paper files organized in the secretary's filing drawer before moving on to the computers. Like most high-end businesses, this one had converted to electronic file storage, leaving Adrian little to do but crack into their computer systems. If only the asshole in charge here wasn't a clever bastard, Adrian could've done all of it from home. However, when he'd tried that earlier, he'd found not a trace of their computers online. At the time, he'd figured it was either a lack of internet connectivity or a savvy guy who turned everything off at the end of the day. As it turned out, it was the latter. Not only were the CPUs off, but their internet connections were disconnected--literally. There wasn't an Ethernet cable to be found in the entire office.

Unfortunately for the enterprising owner of this business, Adrian came fully equipped. Adrian suppressed a snicker and pulled out a small zippered case, which contained a bevy of tools used for various acts of vandalism, burglary and assorted things-he-shouldn't-do. A moment later, Adrian had his mark's computer booting up.

It didn't take long for Adrian to realize that for all this guy's rudimentary computer smarts, he was at heart just as naïve as the next home computer user. His password was cracked with remarkable ease by Adrian's software, and once inside the computer all of the files Adrian needed were located with minimal discomfort--they were crudely hidden with the simplest encryption available. Pig latin would've taken Adrian longer to decode.

After downloading most of the contents of the man's hard drive, Adrian installed a few monitoring programs and shut the computer down again, deciding that since the operation was going well so far he might as well have a go at the secretary's computer. He didn't think he'd find anything really useful, but one never knew.

Much to Adrian's surprise, the secretary's computer was much more difficult to access. He wondered briefly about why the front office computer--normally set aside for appointments and busy work--would be so much more closely guarded. Once inside the computer, however, Adrian ceased wondering about that at all. His attention was consumed by the disturbingly high number of pornographic images stored on the computer, all hidden behind innocuous memorandums and files. The first couple were basic tit-and-cum shots, but after a few of those the images turned into something wholly different. Children, obviously prepubescent, flashed on the screen in positions far too lewd for their ages. Adrian grimaced and closed the files, disgusted by their contents. Nothing on this hard drive had anything to do with the espionage he was tracking, but Adrian made copies of what he'd found anyway. There was no way he *couldn't* make a record of it; the part of himself dedicated to playing Ray Kowalski was screaming at the appalling injustice of the blatant child pornography.

On his way out, Adrian reset the office's security system, making a note to himself to look up who had done the place's upgrades. In the brief time he'd been inside, the sun had set, driving the temperature down just enough to make his shirtsleeves insufficient against the cooling breeze.

The drive home was uneventful enough to leave Adrian the freedom to ponder what the fuck he was going to do. His official assignment was going well enough... but the other, what he'd just found, worried him. He couldn't officially do anything; it wasn't within the scope of his assignment and he couldn't just waltz into the 27th in the morning and spontaneously suspect the secretary of a respected businessman of distributing and possibly making child pornography. An anonymous tip might work, but even the bumbling twits at the CPD would eventually track down the source--even if they got the FBI to help them.

For that matter, the FBI might well be onto the porn thing--and they might be ignoring it. After all, the US government knew about the information trafficking and was doing nothing about it; it was entirely possible that they were sitting on the child pornography business so as to avoid disturbing a profitable relationship. Dealing with the devil did have its consequences.

If the FBI knew about the child pornography and was under orders to ignore it, then Adrian would be seriously compromising his position by drawing attention to its existence. If any of the myriad fingers of the Federal government found out whom he was and why he was in Chicago, he'd be lucky to make it back to Canada in one piece--and if he did, Canada wouldn't be very happy with him.

The thought of doing nothing, though, left Adrian queasy. He knew that the magic of computer graphics could do a lot, but there was no way those pictures were doctored--innocent enough photos turned into a valuable commodity on the black market. No, those were living children turned into... It made Adrian's head hurt just to consider it at all. He had to do something. He just didn't know what.

When Adrian got home, he sank himself into organizing and analyzing the information he'd retrieved, figuring that working on the case at hand would clear his head enough for him to think of something to do about the other unpleasantness he'd encountered that evening. Failing that, beer might work to erase the images from his brain. He'd have tried both at once, but beer and espionage was a bad mixture. Often led to embarrassing international incidents and subsequent reprimands--not that he'd personally experienced such things, but he'd heard tales now and then about indiscreet agents, beer and pretty women.

Well, at least he didn't have to worry about that last one. He'd never heard of anyone blowing their cover over a cute Mountie... and he was most definitely not going to become the punch line in CIS's next break room joke. Beer was sounding better and better, so Adrian returned his laptop to its hiding place and found something brainless and entertaining on television, perfect for drowning his self pity in beer and wishing he'd never turned on the secretary's computer. Poker was on ESPN, so he tried watching that. Since when was poker a sport? It made no sense to him, but he was Canadian and never really understood American television.

Despite dwelling on improper sexual contact with certain RCMP Constables, breaking protocol, beer, cards and international espionage, when Adrian went to bed it was with disturbing images of children lingering in his mind.