Ian Riley has one of those faces.
There’s something familiar about it, like he was your high school friend’s older brother, or the guy you see every third Tuesday at the coffee shop. He looks like your next-door neighbor from the arcology twenty years ago, or maybe the tow truck driver that finally picked you up that day your skimmer stalled out and you were stranded for three hours in the bad part of town. Maybe you saw him on TV, maybe on the cold open of a detective show, the kind where a couple is walking down the street arguing about whose turn it is to tell Aunt Jenny she can’t come over for dinner, and then they stumble over a body.
You feel like you’ve seen him somewhere before, like you know him but can’t quite place him. His face is an affable face, handsome but not too handsome, wry-eyed and crow-footed, hair peppered with grey at the temple, stubble edging the jaw. He’s at that indeterminable age between thirty-five and fifty, skin tone halfway between caucaisan and something else. He comes off as vaguely nonthreatening, with an easy smile and the tendency to lean against things in a casual slouch. He makes eye contact but not too much eye contact, nods and listens and greets you like he’s met you before. His is a face that opens doors and lowers guards, and gets people to open up.
Good thing, then, that he does what he does - Ian is a reporter for the United Nations Correspondents Association, sent with the colony to chronicle the journey to Arcadia and the countless stories of the mission’s personnel.
At least, that’s what he is on paper. The truth, as always, is more complex. Ian left behind a lot of things on earth, including a sea of debt, a murder charge, and several bitter exes. No, he doesn’t really have a masters from Northwestern or experience as an entertainment correspondent at Reuters, but that’s all right - the college he’s actually from is called the school of hard knocks, and his job experience is otherwise known as fake it til you make it. Ian Riley isn’t even his real name.
Ian has his thumb on the pulse of the colony’s burgeoning black market, and he knows where and how to get any kind of contraband you choose, anything from the moonshine stores on level eight to the underground nightclub on C-deck. His face and his credentials open doors and make friends, and if that doesn’t work, he has a backup plan for everything.
It’s a good thing he’s so resourceful. He’s being blackmailed by one of the most powerful people in the colony, and he has to play along and tell the stories he’s instructed to tell, but hey, maybe he’s got a plan for that too.
