Boston—that same moment
Standing at the edge of the small crowd that had gathered to watch the fire, Stephan Stratowich felt a surge of relief as the woman was helped to the paramedic van that had just pulled up. It wasn’t because he would have felt any guilt over her death; rather, his boss had told him to avoid unnecessary complications. The woman’s death would have counted as one.
Stephan had blown up two other similar buildings over the past several years; it was a sideline he didn’t particularly like, but the assignments were something he couldn’t refuse, especially when they came from Medved and the other associated with the clans that kept him employed. The trick wasn’t in making a gas explosion look like an accident; it was in limiting the damage. There was always an unpredictability that the most thorough plan could not eliminate. In this case, the explosion had occurred nearly ten minutes after Stephan had intended, greatly increasing the collateral damage—only the commercial building at the end of the row was supposed to have been destroyed. It was empty; the job was probably part of an insurance scam, though Stephan never knew, or wanted to know, the particulars.
Now that the woman was out of the building, Stephan turned his attention to the odd-looking creature that had retrieved her. It was mechanical, some sort of robot, very unlike anything Stephan had ever seen at a fire.
He had other work to do today, a full agenda. Still, the contraption intrigued him enough that he decided to get a better look, so he edged around the back of the crowd. He took his phone from his pocket and slipped over to the video screen. This was definitely something worth taking a video of.