Less Drama, More Bullets

Bionic Woman: Rebuilt

2008-10-09T23:06:00.001+02:00

That evening, Jaime Sommers wasn’t a bartender.

Her eyes traced patches of grass in the darkness, rushing past the closed window by her side. Dark grass, normal grass, dark grass, street sign – the car was driving too fast, and even when she craned her neck around, she couldn’t catch what the sign said. She closed her eyes and leaned against the headrest; a small array of tactile sensations keeping her connected to the ride. The soft whirr of the car’s engine in the top third of its RPM range, the minute ups and downs from the suspension, tiny shockwaves crawling up her back whenever the gearbox shifted – after a minute, it was almost like she could hear the transmission control electronics whisper in her ear, shifting whenever the engine’s whirr pitched too high or too low.

And yet, she couldn’t get any sleep.

Well, she knew what was to the right of her (grass, lots of it), she had a fairly good idea of what was ahead (50:50 split: that cute little stretch of road illuminated by the headlights on top, the boring part of the dashboard below), so she decided to complete the picture with a glance to the left.

The driver’s seat was occupied by a guy on the wrong side of twenty-something (much like Jaime herself, to her annoyance): light brown hair, permastubble, intensely focused on the asphalt ahead. That’s William Anthros, her memory told her, he’s your slightly-more-than-boyfriend. Bizarrely enough, when she considered this, it also made her remember a few lines of solipsistic thought: maybe he had just started existing then, along with her memories of him. That would be a crying shame, she reflected, because those were rather good memories, seemingly not subject to the Jaime Sommers effect.

“You’re thinking about how this will go wrong,” he said, eyes still fixed on the road.

Speaking of which…

“I’m thinking of us,” she replied.
“I’m fairly certain you’ve had your screw-up of the day,” Will said. “They didn’t have the strawberry smoothie.”
“No smoothie, true.”
“And that’s it. Had to be it, I think, because what kind of café runs out of strawberries?”
“It was a good date, still,” she said.
“Maybe we can grab a smoothie on the way in.”
“No offense, Will, I just kind of want to get home and sleep.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I just don’t think…”

Light from behind cast Jaime’s head in silhouette.

---

For a millisecond, William Anthros weighed 5 tons – well, technically, exerted a force on his seatbelt roughly equal to a mass of five tons under Earth standard gravity – but that was rather unintentional on the part of the universe, which was after all just following the rules like everyone else. As it turned out, Will was attached to the car, which had a much stronger case for most important tumbling object in this scenario, but the essential instigator – a heavy dump truck, perhaps guilty of intent to t-bone – was already in the process of driving away from the scene of the incident, taillights fading into the dark as the car came to a tumbling stop in the ditch at the side of the road. Following the problem of the (trash) heap, it was rather dubious whether the car could then still be called the same in this configuration.

Will Anthros was alive, that much he could be reasonably sure of: his main working theory to that effect was that hell couldn’t possibly be this painful. That thing attached to his left shoulder looked more like a well-worn stock photo for “compound fracture” than his good squash-racket swingin’ arm. His face wasn’t doing so hot, either, but he couldn’t see that from his position in the driver’s seat, and he had more important things to worry about in any event; ride the adrenaline before shock sets in, get out. So much for the plan, anyway: having a few PhDs doesn’t help with remembering that you’re still buckled in, though his persistent failure in climbing out of the car eventually set Will on the right path. The windshield was a spider-webbed mess, but he managed to unlodge that with a few good kicks (and more than a few bad ones); by the time his medical training made him consider whether he had damaged his spine in the crash, he was already outside, stumbling away from the car. To be fair, though, there wasn’t much of a choice between fighting your way out of a car wreck or quite possibly roasting alive in a fire, just on the off-chance of a fractured vertebra. He froze in position when he thought of Jaime, turned around and fixed his gaze on the twisted auto carcass.

It was at some point after that (a few seconds at most) that Will – broken and bruised William Anthros – realized that he’d been on the lucky side of the wreck.

First things first: he grabbed his cell phone (thankfully still untouched in his jeans pocket) and dialed 911 as he walked around the car, trying to spot Jaime in the big metal mess. The passenger side of the car was a little harder to identify under these circumstances, to put it mildly, but finally, he found her hand sticking out of the broken window, a bloodied harbinger of worse surprises still to come with her fingers sitting at a variety of obscene angles. In a daze, he reached out for it and grasped it, a few seconds of nothingness followed by a poor imitation of a strong pulse.

It was just a moment before the phone could click to life with a dispatcher at the other end of the line, but Will terminated the call at once.

He had a different number to dial.

---

“Who authorized this?” Jonas Bledsoe barked, which sounded rather like something a man looking like him would say. He had a face that could give you an ulcer just by looking at it, deep craters dug by 50 years of a not particularly nice life and a hairline receding like the Eastern Front in 1945. The evening ration of pure stress from managing a secret organization had been upgraded to an all-you-can-eat buffet, and Jonas didn’t fancy seconds.

Erm, this is to say that, when one of his chief operatives violated all security protocols and channeled his broken doll through the medical lab of the Berkut Group’s main base, Jonas hadn’t technically agreed with said course of action, due to not being made aware of it. But even if he had to play the gruff boss a bit longer (and he did like doing that), his brain was already working on damage control.

“He did it himself,” Ruth Truewell replied. “He has all the access codes, the medical personnel answers to him, there wasn’t a thing we could do to stop him.”

Truewell: Second in command, tough, commanding presence, expert psychologist, platin blonde hair. (Last successful relationship: 17 years ago. Defending your country takes sacrifices.)

“Oh, really? Nothing at all? How about detaining the son of a bitch until you can get me on the phone?”
“He called in MedEvac, then he pulled rank on the guards, I didn’t hear about it until after they hit the lab.” She bit her lip. “He made it sound like he was the emergency. And when the response team ushered them in all bloodied, well, people started forgetting some of the protocols. They’re doctors, after all.”
“Hard to believe that wasn’t intentional. Clever man, good under pressure,” Jonas said, his voice softening the tiniest fraction. “Of course, begs the question of how we make that work for us.”
“I can start on a profile update…”
“Sure, but let’s give him a little time. What’s done’s done and I need to take a look at the results. Oh, and call Kim. We may need him here soon.”
“What should I tell him?”
“Same thing as always, Truewell,” Jonas replied. “There’s work to do.”

---

Jaime Sommers woke up with a headache for the history books and little idea of what had happened to her; that lack of continuity got kind of scary when she found herself in a hospital bed, something covering half her face and an intimidatingly big IV port stuck in her left arm – with a nice, heavy cuff around her wrist, too. Will was standing there, too, a mask of concern pulled over his face (along with a few stitches on his forehead and his left arm in a sling). Her scrambled brain dug up more things past: that’s what it must have felt like for mom…at the end. It was the kind of messed-up thought Jaime had come to expect from her subconscious, but this one was different.

It didn’t really hit her all that hard.

“Easy, Jaime,” Will said, touching her left hand. “Take it easy.”
“Will? What happened to your arm?”
“We were in a traffic accident. My arm’s fine, mostly, thanks for asking.”
“Okay, then, what happened to me?”
“You had some serious injuries when you were brought here.”
“How bad is it?” she said, looking around. “That’s a nice hospital.”
“You should get some rest.”
“Haven’t seen this one before,” she continued, “but it’s not an ICU, I’m barely hooked up to anything except the IV…”
“Know a lot about hospitals, do you?” he asked with a teasing smile.
“Well, Mom, I told you about that, and then there’s General Hospital…what’s in the IV? Looks kind of milky, haven’t seen that before, either.”

Will’s eyes wandered from the bag to Jaime’s face, but his window of opportunity ended when Jaime squinted.

“What the hell is perfluorodecalin?” she asked almost innocently.
“You can read that?”
“Yeah, it’s like…really small, but also really sharp. Lots of text around that, can’t read that.”
“Okay, there’s a few things I need to tell you.”

Jaime fixed him with a questioning glance.

“Like why I’m strapped down to the bed?” Noting Will’s lack of response, she tugged on the restraint for her right arm suggestively. “Okay, go ahead. Explain this to me.”
“Ah…how do I put this?”
“Come on, Will, some answers.”
“Straight dope?”
“Tell me.”
“Well, technically speaking…that’s not your arm.”

Jaime, without quite intending to, ripped the restraint right off the bed’s frame. Will’s choice to stand on the left side of the bed was thoroughly vindicated.

Jaime considered her feat of strength for a moment, staring at her right arm. It looked perfectly normal, at least, so maybe the restraint was just…no, Will’s face told a different story. He wasn’t lying about that.

Okay, I couldn’t do that before.

“Please stay calm,” Will said, trying hard to follow his own advice.
“I’m calm,” she replied and meant it. “So what did you do to me?”
“My job.”
“You teach bioethics.”
“My other job.”

Will fetched a chair from the far corner of the room and moved it close to Jaime’s bed.

“Without saying too much…I’m involved in the development of a new generation of prosthetic limbs.”

Jaime raised her right arm to look at it. She watched it closely, flexing her fingers – there wasn’t a difference. Wait, prosthetic? You have to lose your limbs to get a prosthetic…

“People get stronger when they’re under stress,” she said without believing it, “adrenaline and all that. And you can’t just build something that looks and acts exactly like my arm. Is this your idea of a sick joke?”
“No, Jaime, that’s the point. We can make replacement limbs like that. Good enough that you can’t tell the difference. Think about this: you just ripped a top-of-the-line institutional restraint to pieces without even trying. That’s not adrenaline strength, that’s not PCP strength, that’s stronger than you could possibly be with a natural arm.”
“There’s no difference…”
“The earlier versions took much longer to integrate – and required skin transplants. You don’t believe me now, but all that means is that we’ve done a good job building an arm that looks like your own. How do you think you would react if you were looking at a metal hand?”

Jaime turned her arm slowly. There were differences. Little blemishes in the wrong spots, no hair…

Sommers effect, back with a vengeance.

“You would freak out,” Will said. “There’s already so many imperfections in the restoration, I didn’t want to pile on even more things for you to notice.”
“Like the lack of hair on the arm,” Jaime said, still distracted.
“Not just there,” Will added under his breath, his cheeks just a little bit redder for it.

Jaime hadn’t heard that or pretended not to; instead, she dangled the broken strap in front of his face.

“But this isn’t just restoration. You said it yourself, this kind of strength isn’t natural. Why go to the trouble?”

Will nodded without a word. She would have to grill him for details later, but at this point getting used to the ideas swirling through her brain was much more important.

“Can I…can I get up?” she asked.
“I’ll have to consult with the rest of the team,” he said. “You act like you’re feeling okay, but that isn’t exactly a…natural response.”

---

The Berkut Group’s headquarters were perhaps a little bit too enamored with industrial-style design, a whole underground complex of metal hallways and other clean, cold surfaces. The briefing room Will was headed for didn’t disappoint in this regard; he took a deep breath, stepped into it and let his eyes sweep the metal shell.

Jonas Bledsoe, standing behind the brushed aluminum conference table with his eyes fixed on a large wall-mounted monitor; he was watching the security feed from Jaime’s room. In a far corner of the room, Jae Kim lurked, five feet nine of lithe muscle poured straight into a good-quality Bruce Lee mold. His eyes were…somewhere, not focused on anything in the room. Ruth Truewell, staff psychologist, actually bucked the trends by a) sitting at the table and b) nodding to Will as he entered and closed the door behind him.

“Anthros,” Bledsoe said, still burning the security feed onto his retina, “how’s that arm of yours?”

As if in response, Will undid the sling’s fasteners, revealing a metallic sleeve affixed to his injured arm. With a tap on its surface, he activated the touchscreen interface, pale blue icons hovering in nothingness. Satisfied with the readout for now, he shut the display off, then pulled his rolled-up shirt sleeve back down, hiding the device almost completely.

“Healing,” Will replied and sat down at the table, specifically the end with the greatest distance from Bledsoe.
“Must’ve been difficult to do the surgery, with just one arm, complicated fracture, too…were you on painkillers?”
“I was just supervising the operation, Mr. Bledsoe-” Will began, but didn’t get very far.
“Seventy eight million dollars, Anthros,” Bledsoe snarled, still not turning to face Will. “Seventy eight million dollars of taxpayer money and you spent it on a freaking bartender.”
“She’s a viable candidate.”
“At the moment she’s a civilian who’s holding my technology hostage. Give me three good reasons why I shouldn’t have her shot.”
“You can’t-”
“Look, Anthros, you might not care if I ship your ass all the way to McMurdo Station for setting the project back by months, but if you can’t convince me that your girlfriend is the right person for the implants, hell yes I can have her shot. And I will make you dig out every last piece of tech that we can separate from her slowly cooling corpse.”

At that, he finally turned around to face Will, his face frozen in a mask of indifference.

“That’ll leave you with nightmares and her with a closed casket funeral while I sign my name on a condolences card and move on with the project. Am I getting through to you? Are we on the same page here?”
“I understand,” Will said, his voice quivering ever so slightly. “And I’m not trying to stall here, but Mr. Bledsoe, you can’t expect me to argue that case.”
“If you want to keep your job and your girl, I have to argue that case, Anthros. What do I tell my superiors? Start talking and give me something to work with.”
“O-kay…alright,” Will said, collecting his thoughts. “First of all, she’s got a job where nobody will ask questions if she quits. Her mother’s dead and her father’s living elsewhere, so all we have to consider is her sister, Becca.”
“I’ve brushed up on some of Jaime Sommers’s files,” Truewell added. “Dropped out of college, twice.”
“She had to take care of her family,” Will said.
“How do we know she won’t flake out on us, then?” Bledsoe asked.
“Both times, she sacrificed something good for herself out of loyalty to others. When we explain to her how important this is, she’ll be on board, 100%. And we can protect one person, right? Protect Becca and she’ll have no reason to run out on us.”
“I’ll wait for a profile before I believe that,” Bledsoe replied, “but fair enough. Next?”
“We’re seeing a fast and trouble-free assimilation process. With some basic training, she could be ready much quicker than any other candidate we can pull in. Amputees take too much time to rehabilitate and most recent trauma victims don’t react that well. We can keep the psyche in check, but that doesn’t help if the system can’t bond with the body. In that respect, Jaime’s close to perfect.”
“Irrelevant, you only saw that after the fact. No indicators it would happen that way.”
“No, that’s wrong. As per protocol, I ran a blood test with the anthrocytes before the process, her compatibility was way above average.”
“By the time you came in, it was bionics or bust.” Bledsoe folded his hands. “You still put us on the spot.”
“If you’re going to fake files for this, you might just as well put a preliminary blood test way at the beginning, it means we had a promising candidate,” Will said. “The guys were still stabilizing her when I rushed the sample through the lab.”
“Then we can’t be sure you didn’t fake the result.”
“I’m not stupid, Mr. Bledsoe, the test is there for a reason. You do the procedure to someone who tests negative…dying without waking up would be much better. On a negative, I wouldn’t have gone through with the operation.”
“What would you have done instead?”

Will considered that for a long moment, then for another one. Finally, he answered.

“Morphine. 250 milligrams, just to make sure.”

Bledsoe smiled slightly.

“Go on.”
“She’s in love with me,” Will said, his voice regaining some confidence. “Gives her a motivation not to go against us, but I’m not on the mission staff so it won’t interfere with daily operations.”
“A good point,” Bledsoe replied. At least as long as you are loyal to us, Dr. Anthros. “I see you can be rational when needed.”
“I’m not endorsing this kind of thinking. But you asked me for justifications and this is one, even if I strongly believe we shouldn’t stoop that low.”
“A weapon of last resort, then, but even those get fired from time to time, Anthros. Anything else?”
“I knew her from a bioethics class I taught, so I had a good idea of her intellectual and moral background.”
“I can see the beginning of a candidate profile here. Why, Anthros, that almost sounds like you went out of your way to recruit her specifically. Someone with an…intellectual and moral background…that would be useful to Berkut. Circumstances forced your hand, but at least this way there was no chance of her saying no.”
“A cynical person might believe that,” Will said.

Bledsoe narrowed his eyes.

“Good enough to cover our ass for the moment,” he said. “We’ll have to make up the rest with results, and that means we have to move fast, give our sponsors a few success stories before they have time to investigate this in depth. Truewell, I want a profile on Sommers. Kim…Anthros will provide you with a full description of the system parts integrated into the subject. Prepare a training program, start from scratch.”

---

Jaime Sommers concluded that she could’ve stood to rest in the hospital bed a little longer.

Dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, both in fetching Taxpayer Gray (Extra Bland), she sat in a cube of polished steel perhaps constructed as the mockery of an interview room, a large one-way mirror in an alcove above her and cameras in every corner of the room. It looked rather like a low-rent True Lies setup, she thought.

That line of thought came to a screeching halt when she disbelieved, once again, how she wasn’t thinking about the new arm, then realized that was merely another way of thinking about it and abandoned the entire line of reasoning as too meta. Okay, I have a robot arm. But it works just like a regular arm, except I can finally use the bench press without getting laughed at.

…but what the hell is one super-strong arm good for?

The door opened to admit a woman; perhaps ten years older than Jaime, blonde hair, angular features, femininity carefully hidden away under a suit. She extended her hand for Jaime to shake – the left one, as if to avoid Jaime’s newly enhanced right arm. Jaime played along, leaning back in her chair as the woman sat down on the opposite side of the table.

“Ruth Truewell,” she said. “Nice to meet you. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Water, please.”

With a series of thumps, Ruth dropped folders onto the small table, then turned through the still open door and relayed Jaime’s order. With another clank, the door locked behind her. Jaime had a feeling she wouldn’t be seeing that water any time soon.

“How do you feel?” Truewell asked.
“Fine…I guess. Thirsty. A bit bored, to be honest.”
“I see. Do you remember anything about the accident?”
“Can’t say I do,” Jaime replied. “One second I’m driving with Will – Dr. Anthros – and the next I’m lying in a hospital bed.”
“That’s to be expected. You might remember more later, but it’s not important right now.”
“Well, perhaps you could explain a few things to me, then.”

Truewell raised an eyebrow.

“I understand your confusion, but we don’t have a lot of time. There’s a lot of questions I need to ask you.”
“We’ve just established that I don’t know anything about the crash.”
“What makes you think I want to ask you about the crash?”
“Sounded like you were here to investigate this…then what do you do?”
“What do you think I do?”
“Oh,” Jaime said, straightening in her chair. “Psychologist.”
“Dr. Anthros has told you about the prosthetic arm you have received. How does that make you feel?”
“I don’t really have a strong reaction to that,” Jaime said, rolling her eyes.
“Please expand on that.”
“There’s just…you know, continuity. Had an arm before, have an arm now. I didn’t see what he did to me and frankly I don’t want to know.”

---

Much like Jaime, Sara Corvus had had better days.

Like a particularly mischievous cat, she walked down the hallway of a run-down apartment building, her left hand gliding over the wall and her head gently leaned back, bobbing with the rhythm of her steps. Every little crinkle in the wallpaper added a delicious tingle on her skin, the soft creaking of her leather jacket and the smell of old paint all summing up into a faint smile on her face. She seemed almost disappointed to find her destination in front of her; her hand broke contact but her feet didn’t break stride as she walked into one of the interchangeably awful apartments, barely separated from the world by unflinchingly ruined wooden door.

Inside, the man sat on an armchair in perfect stylistic agreement with the rest of the furniture, a mere half second after putting another stitch onto his right arm and now withdrawing the thin thread with the needle in his left hand. Corvus ignored that; as far as body modification went, she wasn’t easy to impress.

“Nice,” she said, looking around. “I like what you’ve done with the place. Impeccable reflection of the essential human wretchedness.”
“Business, Sara,” the man said with a faint Berlin accent, smiling weakly through his thick beard; the bushy brown mess seemed to be surgically attached to his prominent cheeks, all the better to frame his cold eyes with. “Did you finish the job?”

Corvus smiled.

“Not quite,” she said, “but the results were interesting. Can I borrow some of your toys?”

---

Jaime was finally alone, left to her own devices in a shower room styled with the same brushed metal chic as the rest of the installation. There wasn’t much to it; a few shower stalls, sinks, a clothes rack and wooden benches, but at least there were no guards, observers or security specialists watching her every move.

In the hours she had spent detailing her response to every hypothetical scenario known to man, they had actually procured marginally decent clothing for her. She set down the bundle – new underwear, jeans, a black t-shirt and sandals – and started to strip out of her ratty temporary attire. It felt like all that gray stuff should be thrown into the next incinerator, with the Ghostbusters on stand-by to capture any escaping specters.

She felt her new arm under the shower, hot water cascading down her body. Unsettlingly enough, the first gallon had a rusty sting to it, washing hardened blood out of her hair. She washed her face, eyes closed as the droplets of H2O impacted her forehead like a steady drumbeat. The water curled off her new arm differently; the surface was almost perfectly slippery under water, with not a hair in sight. She put her right hand against the wall and tapped her fingers, one after another, picking up speed and trying faster patterns. If anything, the arm was too perfect, every thought mirrored in precise action. This wasn’t just a prosthetic, or even a replacement.

This was an upgrade. Jaime turned that thought around in her head.

She had received this without pain, without the trauma of seeing herself crippled. Her mind provided suitable pictures…war casualties, victims of violent accidents like hers – and yet she’d come out so far ahead of the curve. Without further thoughts, she turned off the shower and grabbed a piece of soap, tossing the slippery block into the air with her new arm. She caught it, and tossed it, and caught it, and tossed it, and caught it, and…

Every time. As if it wasn’t even slightly slippery.

With brief attention to her modesty (not that there was anyone to observe, but old habits die hard), Jaime stepped out of the stall and wrapped a towel around her body, then let her eyes sweep the room. She found the rack and walked toward it with fresh purpose, wrapped her right hand around the uppermost horizontal bar and pulled herself up. What should have required exertion was a simple move, with no hint of straining or effort. I can do this all day, Jaime thought. So she did it again.

And again, and again, and again.

“Look, Ma, one arm,” she half-whispered, half-laughed to herself. This wasn’t the right place for it and that’s what made the moment perfect. After twenty pull-ups, she let go, flexing her arm. There was slight warmth, but no aching, no discomfort even. She took her pulse – slow and steady, as if she had just woken up.

A big grin spread over her face. Oh yes, Jaime Sommers thought, I can do something with this.

She rushed over to the sink, intent on drying her hair and looking somewhat less like a car crash survivor. The skin on her face felt tender, especially after the hot shower; the redness in her cheeks still showed a slight shadow where, just hours earlier, she’d had a bandage over her left eye. Come to think of it, she really hadn’t suffered any visible injuries anywhere…a binary cut-off between her arm being crushed and everything else coming out just fine, which kicked her skepticism circuits into high gear.

Will must have been desperate, she reasoned. And no matter how much he loved her, he wouldn’t throw reason to the curb just to repair her arm. He was making entirely too much fuss about her to account for a serious but not lethal injury…and truth be told, she hadn’t felt quite right since waking up and the feeling had only intensified under the shower. They just hadn’t told her all of it, and that idea ate up her smile pretty quickly.

…it also made her realize that she could read the clothes tag on her new “issue” t-shirt. From twenty feet away. In the mirror.

Definitely not all of it.

A half-remembered phrase from before popped into her head; after another look around to make sure there were no cameras watching, Jaime dropped the towel and inspected her body. The lack of hair wasn’t just limited to her new arm; except for the shoulder-length brown tresses on her head, her body had apparently undergone a rather thorough deforestation campaign. The smoothness was beyond even a good waxing – it made her feel like a well-molded puppet missing a few paint applications. Oh, there would be words about this.

---

Will was already waiting for her when she stepped out of the shower room, all dressed in proper attire and feeling much more like a human being for it.

“Jaime!” he said, moving to embrace her; she returned the gesture, if mostly on reflex. “I hope Ruth didn’t scare you too much,” he continued, leading her down the hallway.
“She’s just doing her job,” Jaime said, mindful of two armed guards walking some distance behind them. “Like meeting a bear.”
“Hm?”
“You know, as scared of you as you’re of it”, Jaimed explained. “The bear, I mean.”
“That’s…” Will said, then thought better of it.
“…not a very good metaphor,” Jaime said.
“Okay, you said that,” he replied. “I’m just trying to be polite.”
“I want the rest of the story, Will. It’s not just the arm.”
“…I didn’t want to scare you too badly,” Will said. “The arm was a place to start, as good as any.”
“I’m getting used to it, I’m doing great at it, too, you said that yourself. It doesn’t feel strange, no angst, no body horror.” Okay, some body horror. ANSI standard levels of body horror. Still manageable. “I think I can handle the truth.”
“You’re in luck, then. Briefing’s our next stop. You’ll get all the details there.”

---

The briefing room had filled up some more during Will’s absence; there were now two guards in the far corners of the room. Jaime was hot on his heels, taking in the ambience. A mere glance at the guards told her that they were carrying Heckler & Koch G36C carbines, Caliber 5.56x45mm, nine inches of barrel with an EOTech holosight…Jaime looked away. That wasn’t her arm talking.

“I’ll introduce you,” Will said, then pointed out faces to go with the names. “You’ve met Ms. Truewell, that’s Mr. Kim, Mr. Bledsoe, and…Nathan.”

The final name belonged to a man who looked like he’d stopped developing his body language at 17, despite his mid-thirties age; of all the people in the room, he was the only one to get up and shake Jaime’s hand, then sat back down quickly. Jaime’s eyes followed him for a few more seconds; dark hair, scraggly beard, constantly fidgeting around in his seat. He looked as nervous as she felt. Etiquette stabbed at her from the murkier parts of her subconscious to go around shaking more hands, or at least say “Hello”, but instead of backing down in light of the stonewalling, she just folded her arms in front of her chest.

“Take your seat, Anthros,” Bledsoe said, his eyes locked in mortal combat with Jaime’s indifference. “I have to begin with an apology, Ms. Sommers,” he continued. “It wasn’t our intention to pull you into any of this.”
“I see,” Jaime said. “Can you get more specific on what ‘this’ is?”
“The Berkut Group. A think tank, most of the time. We develop new concepts, strategies and technologies to protect the United States of America. The system that saved your life was created here, with our funding and expertise.”
“There’s a lot of guns in this place for a think tank. And the air pressure is way off.”
“Really.”
“14.9 psi,” Jaime said, looking mildly surprised. “It is now six minutes past 2 PM. Just popped into my mind. Something in my head is telling me this, and you put it there.”
“That’s not all it does,” Bledsoe responded. “It’s also telling you how to disarm the guards, how big this room is, which direction you’re facing.”

Jaime’s eyes flicked to focus on a nearby trooper. Felix Mendelson, Army Ranger background, ruined his right leg on a HA/HO drop. Best approach: Fake to the left, use Will as shield, get behind Mendelson, blood choke, use his gun to threaten Bledsoe (highest chance of compliance from other personnel)…all figured out in her head, just waiting for “Go”.

“Okay, that’s creepy,” Jaime said. “And I’m not sure what accident victims like me need that for.”
“You’re carrying 78 million dollars” – Will rolled his eyes at Bledsoe’s pronouncement – “of military-grade human augmentation technology in your body. As it happens, all of that was intended for someone who would act as our…field operative. You represent a sizeable investment of Uncle Sam’s money, Ms. Sommers.”
“And just what the hell am I supposed to do with it? I’m a bartender, not James Bond.”
“I wouldn’t be talking to you if I didn’t think you could pull it off.”
“I generally appreciate a vote of confidence, but…I don’t know about that. I don’t think those 78 millions dollars can replace knowing what the hell I’m doing. And ‘human augmentation technology’ doesn’t actually tell me anything about the things you put in my body.”

Bledsoe didn’t say anything to that. Instead, he nodded to Will, who picked up a small laser pointing device from the table. As if in response, the big screen at the end of the room lit up, displaying a schematic of an obviously female body. Within seconds, the right arm, both legs and large parts of the head and torso faded to the background.

“This is,” Will began, “this is how you came in. There are photos on file, for reference, but…this will explain things better. All those faded parts represent injuries you sustained during the accident.”

With a flick of his hand, the image moved, extruding into the third dimension as the schematic rotated to show depth and more detail.

“This, this, these” – he pointed to various injuries on the mannequin – “all inoperable. We had to use Ichor.”
“Cthulhu blood,” Nathan threw in under his breath.
“Actually, ichor is the blood of the Greek gods,” Jaime said, smiling a bit but not making eye contact. “Lovecraft liked the symbolism, everybody else copied from him.”
“What it is,” Will continued, “is a blood additive we were developing for the US Navy. Among other properties, it greatly increases the blood’s capacity for carrying oxygen and carbon dioxide, reduces the chance of decompression sickness, gives us full control over the clotting process…and a few other details. We don’t have a lot of normal blood stored here and you needed something that would stop the bleeding, so we used it.”
“If it’s so great, why isn’t it out there?”
“Ichor is a fitting name in multiple respects,” Will said. “First, we’re only manufacturing it at low capacity and there are no other facilities in the world that can produce it, at least currently. Second, it breaks down very quickly. Third, decayed Ichor is poisonous. When it decays, the byproducts quickly build up to a lethal concentration in your body, and your kidneys can’t filter them out. The only way to counteract that is permanent dialysis and a supply of fresh Ichor, at least until your body recovers enough to replace all the blood you’ve lost. And even then you have to be sure to flush Ichor out of your body, and that can literally take a week. As it stands…it’s powerful, but the cost and equipment requirements make it a no-start outside our lab.”
“What about that breakdown, then?” Jaime asked, trying hard to keep up with her mental notes on the terminology.
“The bionics – uh, that’s what we call the implants, bionics – are built to filter your blood and manufacture new Ichor internally. In the first respect, they support your kidneys, in the second you can consider them to contain artificial bone marrow. Speaking of which, we had to clone and cultivate your marrow to make up for the loss of some of your natural skeletal structure…on the plus side, you’re helping to make some waiting lists shorter.”
“Oh, I’m advancing medicine,” Jaime said, “where’s the consent form?”
“Uh,” Will conceded, “well. I mean, the culture’s already there and we’re keeping it for future use. If you don’t want it used for other people…”
“No, you can do that. It just feels nice to have a choice, you know?”
“Point taken,” Will said, but didn’t go on with his lecture. Jaime found herself at the center of attention.

“So,” she said, “I’m guessing this blood enhancement stuff is what was in the IV.”
“That and a nutrient mixture with a good dose of dextrose,” Will continued. “The bionics generate their own power and working chemicals from nutrients in your blood. You’ll have to eat a bit more to compensate.”

My diet coach is going to love this, Jaime thought.

“Okay, but you didn’t spend 78 million dollars just to make me survive. What are the enhancements?” Jaime sent a short glance at Bledsoe, who took the presentation with a sort of inscrutable boredom.
“Ummm, let’s get back to the schematic,” Will said, collecting his thoughts. “As you can see, we’ve replaced several bones, your right arm, your legs…your left eye. And the internal structure of your right ear. The ear’s the most straightforward implant, so let’s begin with that.”

Ear…

“I’ve got a question,” Jaime said nonchalantly.
“Uh, yes?” Will replied, his laser still pointing at the magnified schematic of Jaime’s skull and the not insubstantial amount of artificial parts placed within.
“Did anyone,” she asked, “did anyone take care of my sister?”
“Becca,” Bledsoe said; Jaime nodded. “We’ll send her a nice postcard from Lake Tahoe in your handwriting.”
“No,” Jaime replied, “school’s been out for thirty minutes now. I said I’d pick her up, which means I’m going to pick her up – and that is not negotiable.”

---

Fifty miles away, a COBOL-85-programmer-turned-teacher looked around the room. Contrary to stereotype, Adam Merchant wasn’t near-sighted, but a nice frame with plain glass in it made for a better persona in the classroom, especially on something as dry as computer science. Five years ago, when he’d started at the school with a full head of neat blonde hair, he had held on to a grand vision of teaching students the essentials of C, Lisp and maybe even some Perl. These days, he supervised the computer lab and considered not finding any porn sites in the server logs a reasonable standard of student achievement. Bonus points for managing to browse interesting-but-not-indecent pages, if they required the student to bypass the school’s (admittedly rather leaky) content filtering program.

So Merchant was balding prematurely, but fragments of rebellious spirit clung to him; enough to recognize a budding hacker at the keys when he saw one, and the clues were there. Absorbed in a fountain of color-coded text, one. Stack of photocopied technical specs, two. Self-taught ten-finger typing, strike three, you’re profiled.

“Ms Sommers?” he said, hurrying over to her screen. It took him a moment to remember that she couldn’t hear him, so he tapped her on the shoulder. She hit a few more keys to finish the line (and that train of thought), then turned to face him.

Becca Summers, 16, female, deaf. Light brown hair, generally satisfied with being 5 pounds over a nebulous target weight, soft face with a prominent nose. Never been caught.

“What exactly are you doing?” Merchant asked, making sure to speak clearly.
“Oh, just amusing myself,” Becca countered. “I finished the assignment and my sister said it’s okay for me to stay a little late.”
“Your assignment was…” Merchant said, checking the sign-up sheet, “drawing binary trees in Java. Are you done with that?”
“Yes, Mr. Merchant. Really pretty, too. Made them change color on each iteration.”
“Print the listing and turn it in, then.” He looked at the screen. “Trying to poll a USB device?”
“Old webcam,” Becca replied. “I thought reimplementing the driver would be fun.”
“I think it would be,” Merchant said, his eyes wandering from screen to the photocopies. His face wore a slight smile. “And I’d love to help you, but I’m not familiar with the ‘EEPROM Writer’ brand of webcams.”
“It’s, uh…obscure.”
“Well, in my experience, if you’re working with ‘obscure webcams’ and such” – even Becca could hear the quotes around that – “you’ll probably need a soldering iron. I’ve got a spare and some flux core from a project, it’s yours if you want it.
“That would help me a lot.”
“Talk to me tomorrow, I’ll have it ready for you.”
“…thank you, Sir,” Becca said.
“One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t sell modchips in my lab,” Merchant mouthed.

Someone with experience in lip-reading might have guessed at it semi-accurately, but Becca understood him quite clearly. She smiled in response, despite herself. Merchant mistook it as tacit agreement and turned away, internally satisfied that there was at least one student at this school for whom AP Computer Science was slumming. Talent like that had to be nurtured and directed in productive ways, and hey, that’s what being a teacher is all about, right? He just had to make sure that his rear was covered, but the thought of mentoring a promising PFY had him elated all the way back to his desk.

Inside Becca’s head, there was that old familiar sting of being underestimated.

Hacking game consoles? You must be joking.

Officially, students weren’t allowed to bring flashdrives into the lab; unofficially, Merchant didn’t worry about that. There was nothing of consequence on or physically connected to the lab computers. Simply rebooting them would pull a fresh operating environment from the file server, perfectly erasing whatever software manipulations students could smuggle past the meager permissions of their user accounts. With every computer in the lab being configured for Wake-on-LAN, Merchant didn’t even have to go around pushing buttons in the morning, just start a script that would stagger the startups over fifteen minutes - to make sure the server wouldn’t be flogged by three dozen workstations trying to pull several hundred megabytes worth of data at the same time. Like all good hacks, it had taken way too much time and effort to set it up just so, but worked with a simple elegance.

So when Becca Sommers attached a USB stick to her workstation, Merchant saw it, but shrugged internally.

Becca didn’t have mischief in mind at that particular moment, though she certainly had some ideas about what a flashdrive – or something disguised as a flashdrive – could do. She just saved a copy of the device driver in progress onto the stick, then shut down the workstation and went outside.

Still no sign of Jaime, and no phone call either.

But Becca, what would you need a car for? I can pick you up from school.

The really bad part, Becca realized, was that everyone she knew had left right after class – so much for bumming a ride. With every reasonable alternative exhausted, Becca concluded that she was in for a ride on the bus.

---

An almost suspiciously indescript minivan hurtled south on the 101, easily qualifying for the carpool lane and the attendant speed benefit. On the back seat, Jaime made another go at Becca’s phone number.

“It’s ringing, that’s a start,” she said; shooting a quick glance at Will. Said bionicist preferred the view of the Marin Headlands; one minute to the Golden Gate Bridge, fifteen to the 280, then ten more to Becca’s school. He had the drive all figured out already, mostly because he enjoyed applying his smarts to more mundane problems on occasion.

“If only she wasn’t so stubborn,” Jaime said, hanging up on another wrong number.
“What does that have to do with the situation?” Will asked.
“It’s her new phone number, I had it written down somewhere but of course I don’t remember it now. Becca just gave it to me two weeks ago because she got a new cell phone – I really don’t see what was wrong with the one I gave her, but-“
“Teenagers,” Will said.
“Something like that. Probably a Becca thing on top of that. It’s got wi-fi and three gees and twitters, and I didn’t even know math tutoring paid that well.”

Giving up on calling Becca, Jaime switched the phone off and flipped it closed. The two guards – Mendelson driving, a fresh face in the passenger seat – said nothing, and that was for the best: their thoughts regarding Jaime’s pseudo-filial entanglement were unflattering at best. At the south end of the bridge, Mendelson paid the toll with cash. No use being in a more-than-Top Secret agency if you leave footprints with your FasTrak account.

---

Will’s carefully-plotted route was aborted about 3/4ths of the way through, inserting a stop at Jaime’s home into the sequence of events. The inherent silliness of showing up to fetch Becca in a new car with two strangers in the front seats had struck Jaime at the tail end of the drive, and considering that her automobile was still parked in front of her apartment block, a quick switch to a more familiar context was well worth the two minutes the stop would add to the projected pickup time.

Except that there was already light in Jaime’s apartment.

Upon stopping the minivan and getting out, loud music was added to the sensory impression – Jaime briefly wondered whether she was picking it up with her newly enhanced ear or if Becca had somehow managed to find an even more annoying notch on her stereo’s volume dial, but finally decided that the safety of her little sister outweighed those concerns.

“Don’t follow me,” she said to Mendelson, who merely shrugged; his assignment was to protect her, not to obsessively walk exactly five feet behind her.

Will did follow her. Jaime decided that she was okay with that.

Reaching the front door allowed Jaime to realize that she’d lost her house keys – like everything else – during the crash; Will wordlessly handed her his spare. For a second, she looked at him as if last night hadn’t happened.

“Becca!” she shouted upon entering the apartment, knowing that it was useless but feeling obligated to announce her presence somehow. The music was definitely scratching on the upper bounds of the word “loud”, and with Becca that would have to be directly correlated to her current amount of teenage anger. Not that she doesn’t have a good reason, Jaime thought, then stepped up to Becca’s room, pushing the handle downwards three times without opening. With no response to her replacement knocking, she pushed the door open. Becca was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling; movement at the corner of her vision made her turn her head and look at Jaime.

“Where have you been?” Becca said, supplementing her words with signing; Jaime did the same for her answer.
“I’m sorry, Becca, I forgot the time. Could you turn down your music?”

To Becca’s credit, part of her “I don’t wanna be a teenager” shtick involved a certain amount of picking and choosing her rebellions: she switched the stereo off, but her gaze still hurled accusations at Jaime.

“I waited for almost an hour and then I took the damn bus home. I could have walked here twice over in the same time,” Becca said. “You should have texted.”
“My phone’s broken. I tried to reach you with Will’s, but I didn’t have your number handy.”
“You know, if I had a car...”
“We’re not having this discussion now,” Jaime said.
“Or you could have left me the keys for your car. It’s not like you needed them for the trip with Dr. Anthros.”
“Becca…”

Becca’s expression softened slightly, followed by rolling eyes.

“I brought Will over,” Jaime said; Will followed her into the room, right on cue. “I thought we could have some dinner together.”
“Hello, Dr. Anthros!” Becca said with fake cheer; Will nodded politely, then wandered away.
“That was unnecessary.”
“So was waiting for you.”
“Okay, screw-up admitted, score one for your side. How about dinner, now?”
“Cool with me,” Becca replied, “but your shift starts in fifteen minutes.” Not so responsible now, are we?

If Jaime was surprised by that, she didn’t show it.

“Dinner’s more important now.”

Becca recognized Jaime’s ‘I’ve got it covered’ face and got up from the bed, ready to walk to the kitchen; instead, Jaime rushed over to her and drew her into a tight hug.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Jaime said, knowing that her sister wouldn’t hear it; Becca returned the hug, if reluctantly.

---

Against all odds, Jaime Sommers’s day was starting to swing back to normalcy, in the manner of a skyscraper swaying in a particularly strong wind. She still had a million things to sort out – quitting her dead-end bartending job being next on the agenda – and any of those could blow up in her face, but she didn’t panic. Part of it was her experience at rolling with the punches…but it was like someone was riding on her shoulder, whispering in her ear that everything would be alright. Having found the usual parking spot closer to the bar full – little wonder, now that there were customers –, she had parked her car further away, chancing a walk through the night to get to work. In her own clothes (jeans, shirt, leather jacket), Jaime felt a bit more like herself again.

The small alley – two blocks away from her technically-still place of employment – was a bad idea, but so was circling around it; Jaime decided to tackle the problem head on. Away from the streetlamps, she noticed her vision oscillate, trading color for brightness and back again. That would have to be a night-vision setting or something; item Nr. 26 to ask Will about during the course of the next week. She silently promised herself to get to the bottom of it, learn every detail about her implants, just to be on the safe side, but in a way the extreme ease of use was working against her here; no urgent need to figure everything out.

It did distract her long enough for the attacker to make his move. He didn’t even threaten her, just a guy in average clothes with a blade in his right hand. He was in front of Jaime as if he had appeared from nowhere, his knife stabbing for her side.

What happened then would never show up in a self-defense manual, mostly because it was physiologically impossible. For a normal human.

Jaime’s left leg snapped backwards in a violent move, not as an attack but merely to drag her hips (and the rest of her body) with it. The amount of force it used was precisely calculated, and with her right leg firmly planted on the ground, Jaime’s body swiveled sideways, the blade’s trajectory narrowly passing her ribs. But the rotation served a second purpose; it helped get her right arm up to speed, and combined with its own power, it leapt forward like a coiled snake, synthetic fist driven against the assailant’s throat. The strike was delivered with an amount of force that would’ve made even a highly-trained pugilist blanch; suffice to say that the man crumbled to the ground with only a pathetic wheezing sound trying to pass for a scream.

Jaime ran.

It wasn’t a good solution; it wasn’t a solution at all. She just broke into a sprint, rushing for the next road, back into the light. Her footsteps sped up, carrying her all the way across the street and to the next passage before she even managed to consider stopping. Running at over 70 feet per second gave her plenty of momentum to bleed off. She leapt off the ground, as vertical as possible, letting the jump and air resistance take care of slowing her down at least a bit. The ascent took her as high as the third floor of a fire escape; she desperately grabbed a vertical part of the structure with her right arm, her legs automatically tucking in and balancing her as she swung around the pole and fell back down to the ground level after her 180 degree turn. The landing was hard, but her legs took most of it, with her bionic arm stretched before her to arrest the last bit of kinetic energy. Slowly, she rose up from her crouch, her heart beating at a solid 160 bpm. Her breathing was steady and subdued. The little stunt back there had excited her, but it hadn’t even started to exhaust her.

Almost subconsciously, her vision flickered back into its light amplification mode, zooming in on the last alley and her first…opponent?

Well, there was a figure staggering away from the alley, though with both light amplification and distance involved Jaime couldn’t quite make out the details, and after a ten-second barrage of cross traffic that threw off her eye’s focus, he was nowhere to be seen. Still, Jaime breathed a sigh of relief. Intuitive user interface was one thing, almost murdering a stranger on auto-pilot quite another.

At this rate, just asking Will wasn’t on the table. First thing tomorrow, she’d read the whole damn manual.

---

The bar Jaime entered five minutes later made her reflexively wince from the loud music; her nice molded earplugs were probably lying in a ditch a hundred miles East and the automatic volume adjustment on her bionic ear didn’t cover for the eardrum-pricking noise invading her natural sonic sensor. Likewise, her new eye made some vague attempts to adjust its light sensitivity, then gave up and focused on matching the adaption of her natural iris. So much for super-senses.

The stereo system – almost painfully overdriven cabinet speakers hooked up to a faux-old school jukebox in a corner – pumped out some forgettable 80s 'tough chick' rock, trying desperately to sound like Joan Jett and failing rather spectacularly at it. Jaime’s eyes were fixed on the bar, however: only two girls there, rather overworked. The attrition of college student bartenders (all over 21, of course) was high, and so Jaime only felt a brief sting of regret over not remembering their names. Even if she had been there to help – it was her shift, after all –, they would have struggled to keep up with the 'Oh My God It’s Monday Again' crowd. One more reason she wouldn’t miss the job.

“Sommers!”

She could hear the shout with a frankly amazing amount of fidelity, cutting through the music and the crowd with little effort. Almost instinctively, her eyes swiveled to look in the direction of the voice’s origin. Tom Zucker – nightshift manager – was cleaving his way through the crowd rather like Indiana Jones would clear a path through the jungle.

If Indiana Jones was a 35-year old failed artist and allergic to his own sweat.

The visual metaphor was apt enough, even down to Zucker’s looks – though few things could look as irritating as a well-groomed pattern of un-stubble – and Jaime braced herself in more ways than one, her legs automatically shifting to an almost defensive stance.

“Where the hell have you been, Sommers!” Zucker shouted, the sleeve of his shirt riding up as he tapped his watch with an exaggerated motion of his right hand. “Shift started four hours ago! The crowd’s eating Stace and Ronnie alive!”

Another glance at the bar. Jaime associated one girl – hazel hair in a ponytail – with the name “Veronica”, so she concluded the other to be Stace or Stacey or whatever her real name was. Jaime’s best guess was that having a boyfriend disqualified her from being on a nickname basis with Zucker.

“Sorry, boss,” Jaime said, not taking her eyes off the bar. For all the stress the job involved, she was pretty good at it and it had gotten her through some tough times. “Next time I get mugged, I’ll just tell the guy he can have my cell phone after I call ahead to work.”
“You were mugged?” Zucker asked, quickly going on the defensive himself.
“Yesterday on the way home,” Jaime replied. “Nothing serious, but he did hit me in the head and they kept me there to watch for a concussion. I had to check myself out.” Lying shouldn’t be this easy, Jaime thought, but Zucker was eating it up.
“I didn’t get any calls from a hospital…” he said, trailing off into quiet muttering about the yellow pages.
“Anyway,” Jaime said, “I just left there.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Jaime,” Zucker said. She finally turned to face him. First name now? She couldn’t figure out whether that was fake or sincere, which meant she couldn’t decide whether to briefly hate him or herself.
“There’s…one more thing,” she replied. “I’m quitting this job.”
“!”
“I’m sorry, but that attack…I have other priorities now.”
“Okay,” Zucker said, “okay. Okay. You’re quitting. I got that. Okay.”
“You can stop telling me it’s okay. I know this is sudden and not exactly two weeks’ notice, but I just have to make a change.”
“No, Jaime, I understand that. I see where it comes from, now, but…” he said, then sighed. “Look, this is probably the last thing you want to do, but I need someone at the bar for the rest of the night.”

Jaime gave him a skeptical look.

“I’ll pay for a full shift, of course,” he said. Jaime’s opinion of Mr. Zucker stopped ascending rather abruptly.
“Shift ends at 2,” Jaime said, more force in her voice. “I want my money in cash, ready when I close up.”

It wasn’t necessary, of course. She could have just as well waited for the paycheck, but a small feeling in the back of her head told Jaime to gather a reserve of cash; this was as good a place as any to start. He just nodded, stalking off to his office.

---

Stace – that did turn out to be her real name – and Veronica were quite glad to have Jaime joining them; they’d resorted to having Stace take care of the orders and billing aspect, while Veronica – at four weeks’ worth of experience only half as green as Stace – had been stuck with actually mixing the variety of alcoholic beverages customers demanded. Neither had consented to be eye candy, but it hadn’t made them consider calling the bouncer over, either. Just the usual level of leering, really, and it took the customers’ minds off how slowly the drinks were coming.

Then Jaime got on the mixing job and things started to work out.

Truth be told, Jaime never was a particularly flamboyant bartender, not meddling with feats of flair or synchronized dance moves, but there was a certain minimalistic elegance to her movements, an economy of motion and multitasking ability that had her churn out cocktails at a prodigious rate. Having almost encyclopedic knowledge of various intoxicating concoctions helped, too. Sometimes, Jaime felt like those damn drink recipes were the only thing she could really claim to remember.

A woman from out of town ordered a Blowjob, and the male cheers gave Veronica enough time to go through her little recipe book and conclude that said drink wasn’t in there. Jaime looked up from her latest creation, locking eyes with the smartly-dressed blonde woman and her angular smile.

Hello, Jaime, the woman said without moving her mouth. Jaime just stood there for a second, dumbfounded, then put the shot glass on the bar and went to work. With a few deft moves, she poured Kahlua and some Irish Cream, then reached back to the mini-fridge and retrieved a spray can of whipped cream to top it off. To top it off, she added some flourish by throwing the can up a foot or two, easily catching it behind her back without looking.

“Ta-daaa!” she said, feeling a bit silly. “One Blowjob. No hands!”
“Thank you,” the woman said, then grabbed the glass. “But I already tried that once and it didn’t work out so well.”
“One gulp, then,” Jaime said, putting the can back into the fridge. That didn’t seem to be a problem for her newest customer; the lady tilted her head back and finished the drink easily.
“How much for that?” the woman asked; Jaime shot her a quizzical look.
“Call it five,” she said; the blonde paid her prompty.
“Leaving already?” Jaime asked.
“I try not to work up a tab. It’s a big waste of paper, and I…don’t like wasting paper.”

Or giving me a tip, Jaime thought, feeling just a little sick. One more reason to get out.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said, taking the glass back from the blonde. “I can keep your total in my head.”
“And you mix pretty well.”
“They don’t call it mixology for nothing,” Jaime said. Just the kind of dumb bartender non-thing she usually wouldn’t say out loud.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Couple of years. It’s my last day, though.”
“Oh. That sucks for me, then, here I thought I finally found a place to relax. This city’s killing me.”
“It’s not so bad,” Jaime replied. “Gets better when you’re past the initial soul-crushing phase.”
“Born and bred?”
“No, just passing through.”
“Same here,” the blonde answered with a smirk. “One last blow-out tonight and then I’ll be on the plane back home tomorrow.” Jaime felt a slight sting at the word ‘home’.
“Is this a business expense, then?”
“No, that’s coming out of my private recreational fund,” the woman said.

Jaime’s stomach was spinning up to full uproar. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but she knew she’d pushed herself too hard, too soon. Damn it, Jaime, you almost died in a car accident. You should be in a hospital, you shouldn’t be walking, you shouldn’t be…

“Excuse me,” she managed to spit out. Then she made a run for the Ladies’ Room.

---

So much for Will’s noodles, Jaime thought, staring into the mirror and wiping down her face with a wet paper towel. Despite her immobile state, she was freaking out on the inside, her eyes focused on something far beyond the mirror. Part of her face reacted differently to the wetness, part of that skin wasn’t hers and worst of all even the discoloration was starting to fade. It wasn’t just other, soon she wouldn’t know what was her and what wasn’t and then, well, what the hell then? Here she wasn’t rushing from one little crisis to the next, ticking off boxes, getting things done, pretending to be Jaime Sommers when she really wasn’t, not anymore.

It made her skin crawl. God, “her” skin. She slammed her eyes shut, trying to slow down her breathing. She kept thinking about Will. He’d told her to stay calm, and in control, but she’d seen the fear in his eyes. He was a smart man. He knew what Jaime could do now, and it scared him. It was starting to scare her, too. Maybe she was finally wising up.

“You okay?” came her voice from behind Jaime…way too close behind her. Jaime opened her eyes…that woman, smiling just a bit. She hadn’t even heard her come in. “You don’t look so good.”
“Not feeling so good, either,” Jaime said, closing her eyes again.
“Maybe you should just…concentrate more.”
“On what?”
“Like on what you can see.”

The blonde was way too close to her now, almost whispering in her ear.

“Open your eyes. Look at yourself. Really look at yourself.”

Jaime opened her eyes. Her cheeks were pale, but she blocked that out. Loud music in the distance, blocked. Strange woman breathing down her neck, blocked.

After a few seconds, her vision shifted. Black & white, she appeared, but her face was almost pure white compared to the grey of her clothes. It reminded her of those shots from Desert Storm, smartbombs raining on Baghdad while little Jaime sat on the couch, snuggling up against her father for comfort. What’s a war, Daddy?

It didn’t look like the light amplification mode from earlier. Night vision? No…heat vision. Infrared.

More looking. Her face wasn’t just one white; when she focused on it, she could make out darker blotches on it, beyond the shadow of her eyes and other features. Artificial skin, she thought. Almost half of her face…her eyes flicked to the side, watching the blonde woman behind her.

Half of her face, too.

“I know where your boyfriend lives,” Sara Corvus said.

Then she grabbed Jaime’s hair and slammed her head through the mirror.

---

Jaime came to with the great-aunt of all headaches (actually not as bad as the last one, not that Jaime cared about comparative cephalalgia) and a face full of glass; fortunately, the simple act of raising her head caused almost all of it to simply fall off. Cautious touches revealed nothing about to cut into her eyes from opening them, so she did and surveyed the damage with the next mirror over.

There was a rather large shard sticking out of her cheek. With little hesitation, she pulled it out. The pain was…bearable. Enough to let her know she’d been in a fight, but not nearly at an incapacitating, ‘screaming in agony’ kind of level. Jaime suspected that this was by design. As she watched, her cheek pulled taut, stitching itself together in a few seconds - then slowly expanded again, with new skin to restore her normal look. Fast healing…handy.

She hurried out.

Her jacket felt lighter…as she walked out, she became aware of her cell phone or rather the lack thereof. So much for warning Will – Jaime made a mental note to finally learn to memorize phone numbers. At least her watch was still there. The woman had a head start of about five minutes; substantial, but not impossible to beat. She turned to the exit.

“Jaime!” Zucker called from within the crowd. “What happened?”
“Got mugged,” she shouted back. “Sorry!”

Jaime hurried out of the place, as fast as her legs could carry her. All she left behind was a confused boss.

“What?” Tom Zucker asked nobody in particular. “Again?”

---

William Anthros had a rather involved penthouse – not obviously so, as his personal tastes tended towards a sort of elegant minimalist approach to furniture, but still swanky and swimming with some of the newest home automation techniques. If there was such a thing as indirect lighting applied to music, the surround system provided it, a barely audible playlist of 1969’s Let It Bleed a better companion for Will’s glass of red wine than the salmon.

Maybe it had something to do with what Will knew about them: he had converted the music himself, one solid 192 kilobit FLAC directly from the vinyl source in stereo with just the lightest twinge of post-processing to fill out the room better. That vinyl, in turn, had followed him everywhere for years, something to fall back on when it seemed like med school wasn’t worth the stress and the tears and wondering if he’d ever have a life beyond staying on top of the heap. The music had anchored him. Sure, it was just data now, a hyperreal abstract, but it still pulled him through the night. As for the salmon, well, he had bought it in the supermarket, pulled it out of the freezer and poached it. It hadn’t done a damn thing for him.

The music faded into complete nothingness, to be replaced by a pinging sound – even with the best system audiophile money could buy, Will still hadn’t found a satisfactory ring tone. Sporting a curious expression, he tore himself away from staring at the walls and walked over to the kitchen counter, or rather the control panel build into the artificial marble.

Call from Jaime. He smiled and took it; maybe his little surprise candlelight (second) dinner was still salvageable.

“Hey Jaime,” he said. “How was quitting?”
“Invigorating,” Jaime said. “I got you a little surprise on the way, Will – you can see it from the living room windows.”
“Can anybody else see it?”
“I don’t think so, but I also don’t care all that much. This one’s for you.”

With a small smile of anticipation on his lips, he walked over to the extended window front of his apartment.

---

On a rooftop almost a klick south of Will’s apartment, Sara Corvus was multitasking fairly well. The blanket under her kept her safe from the dirty ground, while the Cheyenne Tactical Intervention M-200 precision rifle was pressed against her shoulder just so. For a normal gunman, this would’ve been a rock-solid shooting stance, the culmination of decades of experience. For Corvus, it wasn’t even worth thinking about.

“I can almost see you,” she said…or rather Jaime did. Because Jaime was talking to William Anthros, luring him out for a clean shot. Oh, the joys of having an artificial voicebox – and a Bluetooth headset to drown out the small imperfections in her quick & dirty “Jaime” voice.

So Corvus kept lying and waiting.

---

One thing Jaime hated about penthouse apartments: they’re all the way on top of a building. In the tight staircase, her only advantage was her new endurance – she just couldn’t get up to speed.

---

“So, where’s my surprise?” Will asked, looking out at the city below. Nothing out of the ordinary, not that he could see much in the dark other than his faint reflection in the window.
“Here it comes,” Jaime said.

---

Faster faster faster

---

.408 CheyTac muzzle velocity: Just shy of 900 meters per second.
.408 CheyTac ballistic coefficient: Pretty damn good.
Total time to target: 1.35 seconds.

---

Without warning, the window in front of Will shuddered from a heavy impact. It wasn’t so much a single sheet of glass as a composite panel with half a dozen layers, all intended for a different purpose: the outermost one, though, was engineered for toughness. Even then, it couldn’t stand up to the full force of the impact, spiderwebbing like cave of araneae but finally letting the bullet through. That still left five layers, four of which were of no greater consequence to the projectile. The last one was a spall liner, though, intended to form a final flexible and translucent barrier against fragments and shrapnel. It caught what was left of the bullet’s initially substantial kinetic energy, stopping the slug well short of its target.

---

.408 CheyTac standard bullet: Not optimized for anti-material applications.

---

It would have been an expression of supreme confidence for Will to smile and raise his glass to the unknown assassin, knowing that he could step out of the line of fire at his leisure well before the window would finally let a bullet through.

Didn’t happen that way, though.

The glass was left to its devices and the tender ministrations of gravity as Will dove for cover behind the heavier armor built into the walls. To give Berkut some credit, they had made sure that their chief surgeon was well protected in his home…but it wouldn’t hold off a determined attacker for very long.

---

Jaime heard the bullet impact two floors shy of the penthouse; in response, she picked up her pace, almost rebounding from the walls of the staircase on her way up.

No time to knock, Jaime thought as she reached the door on top; using her momentum and leading with her right shoulder, she slammed her body against the door, producing a screech like a material fatigue groan jumping to Hyperspace, but it got her through the door. Her eyes focused on Will, crouched against the wall, who snapped up a pistol – SIG P226, Caliber 9x19mm Parabellum, 4.4 inches of barrel, 15 round magazine… - and aimed it at her.

“Jaime!”

That was punctuated by another impact against a different window, this little copper bundle clearly intended to turn Jaime’s head into a bloody mush. To her credit, she wised up quickly, keeping her head down and joining her boyfriend/lifesaver/foxhole buddy behind more solid cover.

“We should be safe here,” Will said, giving the shooter five more seconds to cycle another round and releasing his breath when no further shots came in. “As long as we don’t step out in front of the windows again.”
“I never knew that glass was bulletproof!” Jaime exclaimed. The weird just kept piling up, and Will with a gun in his hands was the cherry on top.
“Composite smartglass,” Will babbled. “The lotus surface repels dirt, you can adjust the opacity…and it stops bullets up to .50 caliber.”
“That’s great,” Jaime replied. “Why does this woman…”
“Woman?” Will said, cutting Jaime off quite handily. “Describe her.”
“Well, she’s…”

The next one to cut off Jaime’s answer was the apartment itself, or rather, the sound system. Will’s home automation software wasn’t exactly off the shelf, and the smooth synthetic baritone of its expert system had to cope with some unusual events.

“Laser designation detected,” the speakers blared, both loud and with the voice’s calm never faltering. “Evacuate the area. Laser designation detected. Evacuate the area.”
“She’s blonde and she knows about me and you!” Jaime managed to shout, but Will wasn’t really listening anymore; with a start, he grabbed her shoulder to get her attention.
“Smash the window and jam the laser!”
“Laser designation detected. Evacuate the area.”
“How? Will, how the hell do I do that?”
“Destroy the window, jam the laser, just do it!”
“Evacuate the area.”

Jaime would have loved to stay and complain, ask for explanations, but instead she was already back on her feet, running for the windows – hadn’t Will just told her to take cover? – and winding up a punch with her right arm. Her bionic fist went through the fractured smartglass like a stunt car through a billboard, opening a hole almost her size in the windowfront. The bullet Jaime was waiting to catch from that stunt didn’t come, though – it sent its condolences by way of its bigger cousin (twice removed), a small missile shooting up into the night sky. Jaime’s eye automatically tracked the smoke plume to a distant rooftop, giving her just enough time to zoom in and see Sara Corvus grin at her, her hand still on the trigger. Jaime almost froze at the thought that she might have just made a terrible mistake. Saving Will meant being at the mercy of this…woman.

Then the missile reached the apex of its flight and zeroed in on Will’s apartment.

“Laser designation detected,” the system sounded once more for emphasis. Jaime blinked her eye at the rapidly-approaching missile, and with no warning the right side of her vision went black. Before it had a chance to stay that way, white text – scrolling almost too fast for Jaime to focus on – scrolled through her field of vision, as if somebody had hooked her optical nerve directly to the monitor output of a VAX computer workstation.

INC LAS PRF 4354
MSL DETECT AGM-114N
LINK OK
CM…
CM…
CM…

And then the missile…swerved, for the lack of a better word. It didn’t curve to the sky, because it wasn’t that maneuverable, but somehow the previous trajectory was wrong, and the designator signal was somewhere else, and

WHOOOSH

The missile flew past the building. It was now firmly convinced that it should blow the crap out of the Pacific, which – while environmentally unsound – was much better than waking up a random Bay Area resident with a faceful of burning fluoridated aluminum.

Jaime was rather glad when her eye stopped puking uncomfortably short Milspeak over her field of view and got back to letting her see stuff. In particular, it let her see Sara Corvus on the rooftop. The woman was nodding, as if in respect, and then her voice was in Jaime’s head again.

Nice save. Now come over here, we need to talk.

Jaime still stood behind the window, utterly baffled. Just jumping down to the street seemed like the fastest way, so she did that.

---

Jaime’s (theoretical) terminal velocity: 35 meters per second.
Total height from Will’s apartment to street level: 68 meters.
Actual influence of air resistance: minimal.
“Air Control” subroutine of Jaime’s kinetic control loop: Version 7b.

---

Falling from a penthouse isn’t just stepping off the edge and screaming all the way down. Jaime had to jump off to reduce the risk of hitting the building’s side, and spread her limbs as far as possible to influence her orientation. The part of her brain that processed fear had already gone on strike during the encounter with the missile, and her actions were barely more than letting the implants use her body, even hijacking the natural parts of her body to accomplish their goal. She had to reach that woman, and as quickly as possible – no time to consider, no time to plan, just run on autopilot and sort this mess out later.

After all, she had just told an anti-tank missile to pack up and go play somewhere else. The only way to get through this was to be faster than her opponent, adapt and chase her down before she could try something new.

And then there was the ground. Her legs tucked in and Jaime closed her eyes.

---

7B (hex) in decimal: 123
Nathan’s code management practices: idiosyncratic

---

The impact was harsh but not unreasonably so; having artificial legs and hips gave Jaime the shock absorption needed to not snap her bones on hitting the ground, but that didn’t mean that there was no pain. Despite rolling, her back felt like it was on fire for a few seconds before she managed to pick herself up, and her left hand was wearing several nasty scrapes. The leather jacket had seen better days, too.

She started running again.

---

Will wasn’t in a very good place, mentally. His physical position was almost enviably safe, crouched behind a solid foot of reinforced concrete in his apartment, gun in hand, but his head was moving from side to side, trying to figure out the next step.

“Anthros?” came Bledsoe’s voice from the computer panel in the kitchen, sounding vaguely annoyed. “We’re flashing red from your location, what the hell is going on?”

Will took a few deep breaths, then – gun forward – he skedaddled across the floor to the heavy counters of the kitchen area, sacrificing a dignified mode of locomotion for speed and keeping his head down.

“Anthros?” Bledsoe called again; Will rose from behind the counter, pistol aimed at the night outside his window. Without taking his eyes off the darkness, he punched the panel behind him, then sunk back behind cover.
“I was attacked,” he said, too scared to sound scared.
“Understood. We’re scrambling a response team, ETA ten minutes. Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine…are you tracking Jaime?”
“She switched her cell phone off. We had a brief blip two minutes ago but couldn’t trace it. Mendelson says they’re still on the job, though, I’ll have him take her to a safe place.”

Sure didn’t see any guards following Jaime, Will thought, but didn’t quite make the connection.

“Uh, I don’t think that’s going to work. Jaime was here, just a few seconds ago…”
“What? Where did she go?”
“I don’t know…I lost track of her when she jumped out of my window.”

With no reply forthcoming, Will released the magazine from his gun, checked that it did, in fact, contain bullets, then snapped it back into the weapon. The cold salmon on the countertop crept back into Will’s mind.

“So, uh,” he said, “you might want to send that response team to her location, when you know where she is…”

---

It had to be a half-completed skyscraper under construction, Jaime thought; there were more stairs for her new legs to climb, and she wondered briefly how much mileage her artificial knees were rated for, mostly because she didn’t care for the idea of taking herself to the shop at some point. She’d seen that woman on the roof, and dammit, she was going to get some answers.

Once on top, it was only instinct that had her grab onto the nearest handrails before she kicked the sheet-metal service door off its hinges. This was fairly dramatic, as far as entrances went, but also intimately reminded her of Newton’s third law – her new strength was easy enough to figure into plans of action, but Jaime hadn’t fully adjusted to all the consequences yet. Her arm absorbed the shock just so, almost propelling Jaime out onto the roof on the rebound.

That woman did indeed wait for her on the roof; on seeing Jaime stumble out of the doorframe, she smiled, said a chirpy “Hi!” and raised the gun – Heckler & Koch P3000, Caliber 9x19mm Parabellum, 3.9 inches of barrel, 15 round Yeah, yeah, shut up - in her left hand to aim squarely at Jaime’s chest.

“Not very impressed so far,” she said; Jaime put her hands up. “I don’t want to shoot you right now, mostly because I think you deserve a little time to realize just how thoroughly screwed you are.”
“Who are you?” Jaime asked. It seemed like the thing to do at the moment.
“I’m Sara Corvus,” she said, before she pulled Jaime’s cell phone from her jacket. “The first bionic woman.”

Well, crap.

Jaime waited for the shock to come, realized that that particular reaction seemed to be a non-starter today and instead went for rational. Okay, name and clarification that she has implants, probably similar to mine, maybe more primitive if she came before me…now I just need to warn Will.

That particular problem wasn’t long in existing, because just like that Will got another call from Jaime Sommers.

---

Will actually felt a vague sense of boredom. Still sitting behind the counter, he wanted to move on to the next phase of defending himself, but not knowing what that was turned out to be a serious handicap. He was a scholar, after all, not a secret freaking agent, and the parts of his brain that weren’t deadlocked into a stalemate over whether to get the hell away or stay behind cover were quite busy worrying about Jaime. The small bug-out pack slung over his shoulder was stocked with all the usual trappings: a handgun (already removed), several full magazines for said handgun, cash, credit cards, prepaid cell-phone, fake IDs, address list for safe houses, packets of trail mix and a small first aid kit.

Then, the phone call. Jaime’s voice.

“Will? I’m…I’m scared. I thought...I thought you fixed me, I thought I wouldn’t be afraid anymore.”

Sobbing.

“I thought I could be strong, Will, strong as you made me. But I’m not. Not strong enough. I never was.”

A gunshot.

“Jaime!” Will heard himself shout, darting up to the computer panel…past it, past the counter, up to the window. He curbed his instincts, channeled them into other moves, turning away from the windows then back to it, tears welling up in his eyes. So many things he’d achieved, and he was still powerless after all.

Jaime laughed, and Will turned around to face the panel. Little by little, the voice mutated into something horribly familiar. Laughter.

Her.

“Oh, that was,” Corvus said, words bubbling up between barely suppressed giggling. “That was rich. Felt sooooo good. I wish I could see your face right now, Anthros.”

Will’s gun rose all by itself, pointing into the darkness. His eyes frantically tried to pierce the night, but he had no chance to spot Corvus.

“Oh, wait,” her voice proclaimed proudly, “I can.”

At this range, Corvus’s pistol didn’t stand much of a chance of actually hitting Will, but he still jumped for cover; seconds later, three bullets slammed into the still-intact smartglass panels. As he picked himself off the ground, something inside him stirred – maybe just his pride, or maybe the first glimpse of an idea.

He rushed off to find his laptop.

---

“I’ll probably have to kill him later,” Corvus said, swinging her gun back to cover Jaime. “What, no heroics? I thought you’d try to jump me.”
“You’re too far away and I’m unarmed,” Jaime said. “And I don’t even know why you’re doing all this. I’m not a trained killer.”
“Trained, obviously not,” Corvus retorted. “So, this thing with Anthros, don’t tell me you’re still all torn up about it. I figure you’ve had some time to rethink your ‘relationship’ with that creep.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nobody gave him permission to do this to us, Jaime,” Corvus said, her voice breaking slightly. “To ‘help’ us by turning us both into killing machines.”
“Both of us?” Jaime spat back, perhaps a bit too forcefully. “Look, Corvus, you’re the one running around shooting at people. I haven’t killed anyone and I don’t intend to.”
“Really. Crushed anyone’s throat lately?”

Jaime felt sick all over again.

“I saw him walk away,” she said meekly.
“No, you saw someone carry him away. You didn’t want to look too closely. What do you think he did, huffed and puffed until his windpipe popped back into shape?”

With a mix between a shrug and a throwing motion, Corvus tossed Jaime’s cell phone back to her.

“Here,” Corvus said, “ask your boyfriend. Or your new boss. These guys following you…they weren’t just there to protect you, they cleaned up after you.”
“Then why aren’t they here now? What did you do to them?”
“Oh, relax,” Corvus said, her pistol never wavering. “I knocked them out and put them in the trunk of your car. They’re fine; it’s more than they’d do for me. Now, tell that scumbag what you think of being lied to, but make it snappy. This place will be crawling with Berkut stooges in a few minutes and we need to make a clean getaway.”

Jaime raised the phone to her ear reluctantly. We…it would have been easy to write this off, but despite everything there was something about Corvus that made Jaime want to listen to her – maybe just Jaime’s own misgivings about her situation. Right there, she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and wake up the day before.

“…Will?” she said.

The other end of the line went dead. Jaime closed the cell phone and put it in her jacket. She was running out of people to trust; if God had answered her prayers that night, he would have given her a cosmic time-out to sort through the confusion.

---

Should’ve gotten Nathan to document this, Will reflected, hacking away at his laptop. A USB cable stretched from one of the laptop’s ports to a similar installation below the apartment’s computer panel, patching the small portable into the larger communications network. The system was in place, but all things considered this wasn’t the best time for a field test.

With a final keystroke, he sent the screen into a convulsion of rapidly-opening windows, all in the service of one massive program. The next ten seconds were automated; enough time to grab his own cell phone and talk to Bledsoe again.

“I’m in,” Will said.

---

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Corvus whispered as she watched Jaime’s defeated expression. “Now, are you with me?”

Jaime? Don’t talk, just listen.

Will’s voice. In her head. Jaime was rapidly running out of patience for lectures.

Corvus is lying to you. She’s dangerous and we need to take her down before she hurts any more people. Please, Jaime, you have to trust me on this, we don’t have time to explain.

“I don’t trust you,” Jaime said.
“Good,” Corvus replied. “Don’t trust anyone just because you think you have to. Berkut did all those things to you and they really haven’t told you anything other than that they own you now, that they’re fighting to protect the United States. Doesn’t that make you just a bit suspicious? And given what they did to you, what do you think they’ll do when you realize that you don’t have to be their puppet? It really doesn’t get any easier than this; I’m the only one who can save you. You don’t have to believe in my goals, you don’t have to like me, but you have to realize that they will use you unless you let me help. Now, choice time.”

Half of Jaime’s vision went dark again.

Jaime, we’re almost ready, hold on…

“Not coming with you, Sara.”
“Okay. Sorry to hear that.” Without missing a beat, Corvus’s finger slipped onto the trigger. “Plan B, then.”

LINK OK
+++ AT OPCODE 802807FF80CE8EB3C9EE48E0EE19D0D9
REMOTE COMMAND OK
: AT Z

The shot rang out, but instead of Jaime’s heart it grazed her (decidedly more robust) leg. That much, Jaime could tell, wasn’t deliberate, and it didn’t take the return of her bionic eye to visual mode to see Corvus lying on the ground. She was twisting and thrashing around in a way eerily reminiscent of a robot having a seizure, which – as Jaime concluded rather quickly – wasn’t all that far from what was actually happening.

“What the hell?” she said to nobody in particular (not much of an audience on a construction site roof on Monday at midnight), only for Will’s voice to answer her again.
The fiber laser in your bionic eye can be used for short-range communication. Nathan sent a shutdown signal to her implants.
“Could she do that to me?”
No, fortunately not. We keep the command codes under lock & key for just that reason.
“Could you do that to me, then?”

Jaime freed the gun from Corvus’s hand to the sound of complete silence in her head. If Will – or, really, anyone at Berkut – could just get into her system and start bossing her implants around, then why the hell hadn’t he done that to Corvus directly? Her right thumb pressed the decocker on the back of the pistol as she hefted it away from her downed opponent; all arm, no Jaime, who didn’t particularly care about the flood of operating instructions and performance data on the weapon spilling into her mind. Not that they’d be of any use, but…

“Jaime.”

She whipped around, gun rising to a firing stance, but that’s exactly what Corvus had figured would happen. Jaime’s right arm was hit with a perfectly timed snap kick, flinging the weapon out of her hand, toward the edge of the roof and finally off the building. The implants went into full combat mode in an instant, whirling Jaime around in a low sweeping motion – very fluid, but misaimed, as Corvus had already departed the ground in favor of a back flip and sent her right leg to meet Jaime’s torso. The resulting recoil took Jaime off her legs as easily as it propelled Corvus further into the air, giving her the height necessary for a full flip with a picture-perfect landing.

Jaime was doing worse on her B-score, flung backward with a broken rib or two and quite rapidly headed for the edge. Again, her arm came through, thrusting its fingers into a nearby wall. That stopped Jaime from going over the edge, even if it felt like it should have ripped that arm right off her shoulder; with a pained cough, she righted herself. As she pulled in a few more breaths, her gaze fixed itself to Corvus.

“You had me going for a bit there,” Corvus said. “Here I thought we’d play without dirty tricks.”
“Who’s playing?” Jaime responded.

Corvus flexed her neck; her eyes turned black, and then she hurled herself at Jaime.

Jaime’s body shifted into a fighting stance all by itself, which was problematic insofar as it meant putting her left – decidedly un-bionic – arm forward to block with. The problem with that struck Jaime at about the same time as Corvus’s leg; the kinetic control loop of her implants kept her arm in position, overrides went to town on getting the sensation of pain down from ‘crippling’ to ‘informative’, but no system in the world could cover up the noise of Jaime hearing her own bones snap. Normal people would concede a fight after having their arm broken in the opening salvo, but the bionics were riding Jaime, making her draw her natural arm back, bringing the right one up into a hammer punch to Corvus’s face and shifting her stance further forward.

Attack and block and attack and attack and block, and oh, by the way, 20 seconds before you can use the arm again. Would you like some more endorphins? Here, have some more endorphins. How do you feel about hook kicks?

Jaime had to remind herself that she wasn’t winning this fight, that much was obvious or seemed obvious or maybe she now had a chip in her head that told her all that, but however she knew, it was hard to dispute. One overextended attack too many and Corvus had her by the wrist, ramming her elbow against Jaime’s nose. Then she pulled Jaime in for a hip toss that Jaime actually recognized from a Judo class, not that it did her much good; getting chucked onto practice mats hadn’t been fun, but it seemed like a day at the spa in comparison to being pounded into concrete.

With the taste of iron on her tongue and a growing collection of bone fractures, Jaime didn’t have many options. Trusting the system to keep her body together, she spat out a little blood and delivered a full-power kick to Corvus’s right knee. That, at last, seemed to stagger her opponent a bit, if not from pain, then at least from damaging an important joint. Jaime struggled back to her feet; Corvus could have done the same to her at any time, but this wasn’t the time to be grateful for charity. New plan, Jaime Sommers: break her legs and do it fast before she can counter.

With the strength of desperation behind her, Jaime hurled herself at Corvus, wild swings of her arm driving the blonde woman toward the edge of the roof. Although her left arm still dangled from her side, Jaime could feel her muscles tensing strategically, realigning her ulna into its proper position. A surprise low kick thrown against Corvus’s other knee found its mark, dropping her limping opponent to a crouch. Intending to finish the fight right there, Jaime drew her fist back to deliver a final haymaker punch.

Well, that was the plan.

Corvus shot up again while Jaime was still winding up, caught the punch, deployed a knife hand chop to Jaime’s right shoulder and threw her to the ground again, this time twisting the arm behind Jaime’s back and putting her booted foot against the spine for additional laughs. Jaime gritted her teeth, her measure of victory relocated to not letting the scream in the back of her throat escape. That hadn’t worked at all.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Corvus shouted; her knees were already fixing themselves with a series of clicking sounds, but she hadn’t expected this kind of viciousness. “Huh? Is that it, Jaime? I’m listening!”
“No, you’re not…” Jaime squeezed past her teeth. “I’ve got…”

And then Corvus heard it, too. Saw it. Chopper inbound.

“I’ve got friends,” Jaime laughed.

Corvus took off, releasing Jaime’s arm rather rapidly; Jaime turned around in time to see Corvus reach the edge of the building, then freeze. With a wicked grin on her face, Jaime stood up, the feeling in her left arm restored. Corvus just looked at her, then reached beneath her jacket to draw a second pistol. When Jaime realized what that meant, her smile defected to Corvus’s face once more.

This isn’t over, came the voice inside Jaime’s head.

Corvus just took a step back and leaped off the building, disappearing into the night. Any other day, Jaime would have taken it for suicide, but she’d made the same fall ten minutes ago. When you’re wearing the world’s most advanced shock absorbers as your legs, you don’t need a parachute for BASE jumping. And when you have a supercharged version of natural healing, you don’t need six weeks and a cast to heal a broken arm. Just like that, Jaime felt her arm being okay again. Good as new.

The helicopter hovered right over the roof, dispensing a group of serious-looking men with G36C automatic carbines, tactical webbing and balaclavas to surround Jaime. She looked right through them, past them, because even while they were busy securing the rooftop and grumbling their findings into laryngophones, Jaime Sommers pondered the future.

---

Jaime’s first glance of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory came from the perspective of being strapped to the gurney, which admittedly didn’t make for a very good vantage point. She wasn’t so much restrained as supported, with her body secured against unintentional movement; having the kinetic feedback loop switched to black hole mode took care of any attempts at intentional movement. A fresh IV was feeding into her left arm and her bionic eye was stuck in the open position, fixed in a neutral forward position. At the very least, they had let her change into a hospital gown herself this time. Well, that, and foot sacks. There really didn’t seem to be a better description for those; they certainly weren’t socks, and they certainly weren’t comfortable – designed to be worn over shoes she didn’t have on. Then again, it wasn’t like she could actually get a cold from exposure on mechanical footsoles.

Aside from the nurse in scrubs – Jaime hadn’t managed to learn his name yet – she could make out Will in the next room, cleaning his hands before suiting up. She hadn’t really paid attention to that before: is washing your hands an acquired skill? A surgeon would need to be quick about it, and thorough; Jaime wondered if Will’s every move under the faucet was an acquired reflex by now, or if there was still room for uncertainty in it. A chance to screw it up.

If not, well, she had that covered.

The whole blessing / curse oscillation of the original accident was starting to look like a cinematic master of disguise wearing seven latex masks on top of each other and peeling them off, one at a time, for an uncomfortably long gag. Perhaps, she mused, getting beat to a semi-pulp by Corvus would turn out to make her win the lottery, or something like that.

Jaime Sommers effect, welcome back, how I haven’t missed you at all.

Will stepped into the room, gloved and clean; the nurse fixed a surgical mask to his face. Nathan was hot on his heels, splitting off from the surgeon’s footsteps to grab a tablet PC wired to the gurney. He tapped something on the screen, and Jaime felt her jaw unclench.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Will said, the mask stripping the worry from his voice. “You really pushed yourself and we need to make sure that everything’s working as intended.”
“I don’t call killing people ‘working as intended’, Will. You might want to check that.”

Something in Jaime knew that she shouldn’t have said that, but the bigger part of her had wanted to do it anyway; of all the people in the room, she surely had the best excuse to be cranky about how things had gone down.

“You didn’t kill anyone,” Will said, his voice still calm. “You knocked that man out, your bodyguards called in an ambulance.”
“So she was lying.”
“Yes,” Will replied, more interested in Jaime’s arm than her face. “I don’t even know how she got up again…”
“We pretty much blew our chance there, then,” Jaime said. “Can’t expect the same trick to work twice.”
“Please,” Nathan said, “she’s a ‘borg, not a Borg. There’s no magic limit on how often we can transmit the kill code –“
“System shutdown sequence,” Will threw in, hoping to deflect that particular verbal blow. “It doesn’t literally kill her.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Jaime said.
“It’s just…you see…” Nathan began, thought for a second, then started over. “When we engineer something, something that needs to be turned off for safety reasons, we give it a kill switch. Same principle here, but obviously we can’t have a physical button on an augment. So this is a kill code, and it can be flashed by a strobe light or a laser, as needed. Switches her systems off, all of them, no questions asked. In theory, she should have been blind and paralyzed for as long as we wanted.”
“If it was me–“ Jaime said, thinking that this could very well be her, given some time –“I’d do my best to remove that kind of ‘safety feature’. Especially if I wanted to take on the people who built the implants.”

Will’s eyes shot over to Nathan. Jaime couldn’t quite tell if it was a ‘Don’t think about shutting down my girlfriend’ or a ‘Did you make the new version better?’ kind of look.

“I’m sure she tried,” Nathan scoffed. “But good reverse engineers don’t fall from the sky. It’s called ‘kill code’ for a reason, and I used every dirty trick in the book to make it hard to crack. State of the art for Berkut, 2004…which is Rest of the World 2012, if I don’t miss my guess.”
“Every trick in the book, huh?” Jaime replied, defaulting to sarcasm in lieu of a more intellectual riposte. “But that book has changed. A new edition, if you will, and I’m sure there were a few…errata.”
“Nathan wrote the book,” Will said, grabbing a scalpel from the tray. After a moment of reflection, he decided to abandon the metaphor instead of going down with it. “He built the system, he’s the only one who can take it down.”
“This isn’t like your vanilla DRM scheme where you get a script-kiddie with a debugger, trace a couple hundred steps and change an address jump to bypass the whole security program. It’s in there for good, and God would I love to see how she managed to mitigate it. In any event, even if she can recover from it, it’ll still take her down. You get her to look at you for a few seconds, we can scramble her again.”
“The trick is getting her to look at me,” Jaime said. Nathan tilted his head sideways, not quite nodding, not quite shaking his head.

Awkward, Jaime thought. She went off in search of a new faux pas, just to keep the conversation fresh.

“Will, what are you doing with that scalpel?”
“Tissue sample,” he said, digging the blade into her arm. For all that Jaime’s nerves were telling her, he might as well have cut air.
“Oh. Cool.”
“…cool?” Nathan asked.
“I can’t feel it all,” Jaime said. “It’s been the same way ever since the jump. I'm not scared at all. I just feel kind of...feel kind of invincible.”
“Is she always like this?”
“No, she’s not,” Will said, retrieving a tiny piece of Jaime’s skin from her arm and putting it in a small glass dish. “Nathan, start the scan.”
“On it.”

From Jaime’s perspective, nothing of consequence happened, but then again, lying immobile on a gurney wasn’t much of a catalyst for action. Another question, then. It felt like being six again, asking the grown-ups about their strange games.

“Shouldn’t you two be wearing lead aprons or something?”
“We’re not using X-Rays,” Will replied, carefully applying a small band-aid to the incision on Jaime’s arm. It certainly wasn’t bleeding and again, she felt nothing, not even the vague sensation of pressure a strong dose of opiates would leave her with.
“And you’re not putting me in an MRT tube…”
“You don’t wanna climb into an MRT,” Nathan said, “trust me. This one’s your area of expertise – Dr. Anthros.”
“You’ve probably noticed,” Will began, then stopped himself and pulled down the surgical mask.

Every Victor has to be handsome, of course, but does every handsome guy have to be Victor? Jaime’s brain became deadlocked between pondering her relationship woes (case reopened!) and trying to muddle her way through a shaky interpretation of set theory, but Will’s voice brought her back.

“…bloodborne nanotechnology that enables your body to recover from many dangerous injuries and attacks. I developed the general design, a superclass of microscopic robots that we refer to as anthrocytes. The current subspecies count stands at 658, but of course we’re still working on covering all our bases.”

It failed to keep her there, though.

So if they can directly block my pain receptors, what else can they do? Mess with my emotions? My memories? Everything’s tied into the system – everything. But Corvus got that under control, got past the system, now it works for her.

“…establishes nodes within your blood vessels and lymphatic system that serve as power and command structures for the robots. The nodes form a mesh network that ties into the system and can be polled for a very accurate assessment of your health – it relays any injuries or blood impurities you may be suffering at the moment, too. Also, I wear polka dot boxers and like to eat unicorn steaks.”
“No, you don’t,” Jaime said, her natural eye focusing back on Will.
“You looked like you were zoning out there.”
“I am zoning out. Haven’t been paying a lot of attention…”

Will nodded to that.

“You’re tired. You should get some sleep.”
“I could use some sleep,” Nathan offered.
“Maybe we can all bring our pajamas and tell scary ghost stories,” Jaime said. “Do some team bonding.”

Nathan scoffed for the second time in as many hectoseconds.

“We couldn’t bond in a swimming pool of cyanoacrylate,” he said; Will had to suppress a smirk before putting on the more serious ‘Play nice now, children’ face.
“We’re all done here,” Will said; Nathan replied by way of tapping a few more buttons, ending Jaime’s paralysis.

With a weary groan, Jaime rose from the gurney, her bare (clad in surgery sacks, but still, effectively bare) feet touching the ground of the surgical theater. There was a brief sensation of coldness without the actual discomfort, which felt a bit like looking at a picture titled ‘Night Sky’ consisting solely of the words “This is black” scrawled on the canvas.

With Nathan and the nurse excusing themselves rather quickly, Jaime and Will were left on their own in the room; a quick glance upward at the one-way mirror didn’t reveal the mysteries behind it. Jaime’s eye struggled, her vision shifting quickly enough to resemble a kaleidoscope, but nothing showed beneath the surface. Almost in defeat, her eye returned to its default mode.

“You just wanted to get me into this thing again, didn’t you?” Jaime said, shifting her hips sideways and pulling up the gown’s hem just a fraction of an inch with it.
“Yes, that’s it,” Will replied, no particular stress on any part of his speech. “I spent ten years in higher education because I love fondling twill tape.”
“And seeing attractive women in revealing clothes.”
“That I will cop to,” he said. “But I’ve seen my share of ugly wounds and not-strikingly-handsome men, too, so it’s a zero-sum game at best. The gown is just standard protocol for the check-up.”
“I don’t see any reason for this, though,” Jaime said. “I feel perfectly fine. The bionic implants fix all injuries anyway.”
“They keep you alive. Without boring you to sleep again, they don’t magically put everything back just as it was. Think of the anthrocyte system like getting stitches – first it takes care of the injury, then it restores functionality and helps your body heal itself. But that doesn’t keep us from looking at all major injuries to make sure there are no complications, not to mention the usual testing on the implants.”
“Got it. Now, if there’s nothing else…”
“Oh, we’re done for today, Jaime.”
“I’m going home, then.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Do you…”
“No, I can’t. Still need to prep the samples and send them down to the lab.”
“Okay,” she said, letting her left shoulder drop slightly.

There was no guidance more obvious than the “Exit” sign over the door to the prep room; Jaime cast a last unreturned glance at Will, then turned and walked out, slightly enjoying the sound of her sack’d feet on the cold floor. Will’s eyes did follow her, enjoying something else.

One of the perks of being a surgeon: easy to separate the mental picture of the shattered crash victim from that of your girlfriend’s shapely body.

---

Jaime needn’t have worried about the observation lounge of the bionics lab, because nobody was using it. That crucial process was instead taking place in the observation lounge of Berkut’s intensive care facility. In the brightly lit room below, Felix Mendelson was sleeping away his nightmares, heavily sedated. Jonas Bledsoe was rather more awake, up in the semi-dark as the man behind the mirror. His eyes were fixed on a spot just to the left of Mendelson’s bed, mostly because he was done watching a sleeping man but not quite willing to turn away yet. Behind him, the door clicked open and two pairs of footsteps entered the room.

“What’s the assessment?” Bledsoe asked, deliberately terse.
“He was locked in the back of the car for half an hour with two corpses,” Ruth Truewell said, her voice vibrating – she clearly wasn’t enjoying the idea of something like that happening to her. “Only weakly responsive to contact. We’re doing what we can to make him comfortable for the night. Too early to tell if it’s full-blown post-traumatic.”
“Mendelson is tough,” a deep male voice said. Bledsoe didn’t acknowledge it.
“It’s not a question of toughness,” Truewell replied, sparing Bledsoe the lecture on the need to move beyond the Neanderthal approach to psychological health. “It’s an issue of reliability. Even if he wakes up and says he’s fine, we need to debrief him and make sure we deal with the incident before he internalizes it.”
“Then schedule a debrief for tomorrow,” Bledsoe said. “We can’t afford to lose good people and we need every detail we can get about Sara Corvus’s activities.”
“Mr. Bledsoe,” Truewell said, “I’ll also have to report to my superiors that Sara Corvus is still alive.”
“Then do that. I’ve got nothing to hide and we could use the manpower in our search.”
“Very well.”
“You’re excused, Truewell.”

Footsteps, the door closing behind her. For all the times that reporting to multiple agencies had caused Berkut trouble, Jonas Bledsoe did appreciate having a decent portion of the US government on standby for favors. He turned away from the mirror, facing the remaining guest in his private domain.

Antonio Pope looked calm, his expression neutral but edging on slightly positive. At just shy of six feet and 200 pounds (12% body fat), Pope was a man with a casual elegance to his stance, elevated to his physical and mental peak by hard work and iron will. Aside from his square chin, there was not a sharp edge to his face nor a blemish on his chocolate-colored skin, deep brown eyes staring back at Bledsoe with a curious edge.

Bledsoe had to smile as memories of past undercover stings floated back to the surface. For all their bluster, he had never met a white supremacist who could have taken Pope in a fight. Or a debate.

“What did the team find at the scene?” Bledsoe asked.
“The rifle and a launch gantry for a Hellfire missile,” Pope said. “Dr. Anthros’s apartment shows impacts from multiple rifle and pistol bullets, but we were unable to secure the pistol. Serial number on the rifle is missing, we’re still checking if the ballistics match the slugs. We should have a report by Wednesday at the latest. The launch gantry looks like a Swedish model. Either way, that must have been a lot of trouble to acquire, never mind getting it in place.”
“Corvus?”
“Nowhere to be found. We pulled CCTV footage of the area and are analyzing it as we speak, but those are just a few convenience stores and banks. I don’t expect to find anything.”
“And our mystery corpse?”
“Still in autopsy, but he’s undergone significant surgical alteration. We’ll have an IAFIS result by Wednesday. No image hits in the employee databases of the agencies, obviously. Bone structure doesn’t match any of our own records, either.”
“We are better off than yesterday, Pope,” Bledsoe said. “Yesterday we didn’t even know about Corvus being alive. I didn’t know, anyway, the Department doesn’t tell me much of anything these days.”
“Are we going to have a problem, Mr. Bledsoe?”
“No. I’m just saying that I sent her body to the DoD and that she was more than sufficiently dead at the time. It felt wrong, and I should have trusted my gut. Now, Pope…you’re doing your job reporting all this to the DIA, but I need you to put on a few different hats in the next few weeks. You’re their man at Berkut, I need you to be Berkut’s man at the agency. Start checking the program for leaks.”
“Anything else?”
“Sommers hasn’t met you yet,” Bledsoe said. “When you have a moment, get close to her. I want to know what she does when we’re not watching.”

---

Jaime walked out of the dressing room – in her own tattered clothes, thank you very much – feeling steadily more tired and awake at the same time, a clear divergence between her body’s natural response and the demands of the bionics. Something about burning the candle at both ends popped into her head.

Footsteps behind her. In milliseconds, the sensation of exhaustion was completely overpowered.

“You look like you need a ride,” Jonas Bledsoe said, increasing his step until he was walking right beside Jaime.
“I’m good to drive,” she replied.
“Has anyone ever said that and actually been good to drive?”

Jaime turned her head to look at Bledsoe, who had his eyebrows pulled up just a bit.

“That was a serious question,” he said.
“Guess I really should know better than that. No, just drunk jerks.”
“There are several reasons why you shouldn’t drive. You’re still recovering from your injuries, you’re tired, and you don’t actually have a car parked here.”
“—good points, all of them,” Jaime conceded.
“And I’d love to provide you with a company car, but unfortunately you don’t work for us yet.”
“I’d walk, if that means walking away. Maybe wander the Earth a little bit, fix wrongs where I find them and drift from town to town.” She paused briefly. “Too bad I have a life.”
“I don’t blame you if you want to get away from it all,” Bledsoe said. “It would be – inconvenient isn’t really the right word, but there would be major problems. I’m just saying I understand that there are better situations to find yourself in. I do think you should work for us, Ms. Sommers. ”
“You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends,” Jaime said. “I’ve met one of your enemies. Who are your friends?”
“All will be revealed.”
“When I’m ready for the truth?”
“No, when your background check is finished,” Bledsoe said, smiling slightly. “We can get you up to Secret with interim clearance in a week, after that it gets a little dicier. But we’re on good terms with the people who make those calls, so I think we can set you up within the year.”
“And what do I do in the meantime?”

Bledsoe smiled softly.

“Training.”

---

There really wasn’t much to do on the drive back into town. Documentation on Jaime’s implants couldn’t leave the facility, and another stern reminder about her lack of proper clearance shut down most other lines of inquiry quickly. Another drive home in the night, and Jaime on the passenger seat yet again. It scared up a few images of the accident, the few that she had managed to register before losing consciousness.

It wasn’t until Bledsoe pulled up a block away from Jaime’s house that they spoke again.

“I’ve got three things for you,” he said, fetching a carrying case from the backseat of the car. It looked rather like messenger bag, but with a more rigid framing inside. There was a large front pocket and a rigid main compartment held closed with two latches, each with a small locking mechanism on it. Bledsoe opened the front pocket first, then handed Jaime a cell phone. It looked…well, it wasn’t exactly her old one, maybe a generation or two more recent. Still rather plain, though.
“Another phone?”
“Forensics got back to us with the contents of your phone. Slightly nicer model, but this has all your old data on it and your old number, too. Use it for private calls from now on. The one Anthros gave you is for official use only. Keep it switched on at all times.”
“Okay.”
“Number two…” Bledsoe said, pulling out a sealed envelope. “Standard paperwork package. New job with a front company including acceptance letter in a separate envelope, a work contract you can sign and show your sister, a work contract on flash paper that you will read and then burn before you sign the real one at Berkut, some supporting documentation, work ID and a debit card in your name. There’s a rather substantial sign-up bonus on it, and I want you to use that to start paying off any financial liabilities you have.”
“Just some student loans, Mr. Bledsoe. And a couple of credit cards.”
“Pay them. Go through your paperwork and see if you owe anyone else any money. Start paying them back, too. What’s left you can use for your own purposes. We’ve also started an investment portfolio in your name.”
“– thank you.”

Bledsoe smiled slightly.

“I’ve seen too many agents crash and burn from silly problems. Gambling addictions, late on a mortgage payment – those are vulnerabilities we can’t afford. Whatever might come up, Ms. Sommers, I want you to know that we can take care of it. Berkut protects its investments, and we’ve spent-“
“78 million dollars,” Jaime said.
“More, actually,” Bledsoe replied with a smirk, “aviation fuel isn’t cheap. Neither is ammunition. Which brings me to the next vulnerability we can’t afford – having you walk around without the means to defend yourself.”
“I suppose this ties in to item number three, then?”

Bledsoe produced a set of keys, then unlocked the main compartment of the bag. Nestled into semi-rigid foam was a pistol - SIG P226, Caliber 9x19mm Parabellum, 4.4 inches of I know, I know – as well as three spare magazines, a cleaning kit and a manual.

“Berkut standard issue. You’ll get a proper range qualification, of course.”

Jaime weighed the weapon in her hand. Nothing, she thought, should ever feel this right.

---

Becca was asleep, of course, though Jaime wouldn’t have had the energy to chastise her if she hadn’t been; more and more, the mental fatigue was piling on, clouding her thoughts, although her body didn’t allow itself yawns or aches. She briefly pondered taking a shower, but finally just threw her clothes over the next chair and sat down on the edge of her bed. Without quite knowing why, she grabbed the pistol from the bag and looked at it.

With an easy move of her thumb, she dropped the magazine free of the pistol and put it aside; with a delicate move, she pulled the slide backward and locked it, then grabbed the loose cartridge from the chamber. One round. She looked at it. She had never fired a bullet, but in her hands, this could be a death verdict all by itself. She had fifty more of them, and that was just the emergency pack. What kind of emergency could require killing fifty people?

She retrieved the magazine and pressed her left thumb down on the topmost cartridge; her right hand slid the loose round in position beneath the feed lips, topping the magazine off. Cautiously, she inserted the full magazine back into the gun and released the slide. There was a sharp, snapping sound of metal against metal, a spring inside the weapon’s guts driving the slide forward and locking it there. The hammer was cocked. Ready to go, Jaime thought.

Then she pressed the decocking lever, lowering the hammer back into its resting position. With a final look at the gun, she laid it on her nightstand. She would have to find a good hiding place for this, and quickly, too. First thing tomorrow.

With a heavy sigh, Jaime finally climbed into her bed. The noise in her head wasn’t subsiding, or even showing signs of letting up: too many things to worry about. The world had started to look like a puzzle painted in gray smudges, and she held just a few of the pieces. The only thing she trusted at the moment was the gun on her nightstand.

Jaime Sommers wasn’t a barkeeper anymore. She wondered if she would ever sleep again.

Two Guns - Parting Thoughts

2008-05-20T07:00:00.000+02:00

Genesis

I had long intended to show a more vulnerable side to Mark while explaining why he is the way he is. The flashback in Just ‘cause literally came to me when I was listening to the song for that chapter – Things I’ve Seen, by The Spooks. It’s one of my favorite rap songs ever, almost a deconstruction of the gangster rap genre. The first part alone contains the two tidbits that informed the tone of Two Guns:

“There ain’t gon’ be no revolution tonight!” kicks me in the stomach every time I hear it. There’s just so much anger behind this line, so much frustration and desperation. Things were supposed to change, things were supposed to get better – but they never did, and nothing we can do will change it. In fact, we’ll keep on doing what we do, hoping but without the will to get there. This was a picture I wanted to paint – a situation that is hellish in its inevitability, something that breaks the people who try to fight it. In a way, this was served by having the flashback establish even before the story starts that Mark will kill Sharon. It’s something that stays at the back of your mind, that this nice and competent woman is doomed, but how can Mark let this happen? There has to be a trick, a loophole, something to save her.

And then there isn’t.

“And I’ve tasted the bitter tragedy of lives wasted; men who glimpsed the darkness inside, but never faced it.” Lives wasted…there’s a lot of them here. True story: the very first version of Mark I wrote as a sort of deconstruction of the modern action hero. What kind of man can slaughter his way through dozens of people and still come out perfectly fine on the other end? And Mark is still there, in a way, as a guy who just kills and kills and seems like it doesn’t touch him at all – until he has to murder someone he cares about, and realizes just how ‘dark’ he is inside when, despite all this, he’s still standing at the end. When he turns away from Vincent and walks, he’s refusing to explain himself because he can’t. That would require going to that place inside that gives him this strength.

I believe I mentioned the idea of “fading scars” being a central point of Mark’s character before. He’s clearly not tearing himself apart over this in the present, angsting about it night and day. He’s moved on. Is that “healthy”? Should you be able to come back from this? An extension of this is Mark’s recuperative power, he just refuses to stay down. We cheer him on as he staggers out of the hospital, ready to fight again and again. There’s the Hemingway quote from A Farewell to Arms:

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” The question is, are there places people aren’t supposed to be strong in?

Now, this is a dark part of Mark’s history. I don’t intend to keep putting him through the wringer like this; in fact, in a way, this is me getting all the bad and evil things out of the way. But while scars fade, they don’t disappear. And the things that happened here might not keep Mark awake any more, but there is no neat closure yet. That’s a different song, though…

You can run on for a long time

Run on for a long time

Sooner or later God’ll cut you down

Sooner or later God’s gonna cut you down…

Themes

Loyalty

This is the hamartia of several characters, most notably Mark. The usual Aesop is that loyalty and integrity are good things, but I wanted to subvert that. The obvious route would be to have someone loyal to a bad person, but I think that’s venturing into Idiot Plot territory. So, Alex is worthy of the loyalty Mark has to her – she’s a good person, essentially, and the bad things she does follow from her inexperience and being placed in a situation that sucks. Sharon even helpfully brings up the focus on personal loyalty: all the crooks (Mark, Vincent, Boris) have a very character-focused idea of loyalty. Sharon, Whitton and Ayers are loyal to abstract ideas, namely the law (and in Whitton’s case, the “greater good”). Similarly, we see several characters (Done, Dollar, Berkovitz) whose chief characteristic is the absence of loyalty. Mark’s problem is trying to stay true to all his commitments when they are in conflict.

Violence

Two Guns is even more violent than the other Ultimates stories. Mark ends up fainting from trauma twice. People are killed in horrible ways – explosives, knives, being run over, set on fire or drowned. Mark and Boris absorb incredible amounts of punishment, Boris being made worse by the fact that most of it is deliberate torture. By the end of the story, his right hand is partially paralyzed, making him the first “heroic” character to get permanently crippled in some way. (I suppose one could count Freyr from Just ‘cause, but he got artificial replacement limbs. Boris effectively can’t use his right hand anymore, ever.)

Punishment

Under the agreement with Whitton, the criminals have escaped legal consequences for their actions. Mark’s job involves overseeing the agreement and punishing transgressions. Boris is punished for his disloyalty by Nikolai. Mark doesn’t just kill Nikolai, he makes him suffer. Mark decides not to come down on Alex even though it’d be within his right. Whitton will presumably get what he deserves.

Intruding Reality

Much of the story concerns itself with shattered illusions. Sharon has to ask herself whether she can love Mark when he’s a killer and working for the people who are the enemies of her boss, and little by little the nice little slice of life she and Mark carved out for themselves falls apart under this pressure. Mark has to face what Alfredo couldn’t…they’re the last people in the city playing by the rules. Dreams and plans are constantly laid low by events as everyone tries to hold on and get the now under control, leaving no room to consider the future.

Sic transit gloria mundi

The decay is inevitable. As the Eastern Block dies, so does the agreement. Chaos sweeps the city in the guises of Silvestro (coldly calculating only for his own profit) and Nikolai (who intends to put the Russian criminals back on top and will stop at nothing to do it). Mark sacrifices his health, his love and finally even his family just to hold things together somehow. Whitton overextends himself and is sure to get shot down. Boris is broken in body. Alex is broken in spirit. And the carefree days when Mark and Vincent and Alex were like brothers and sister are over, too.

Recurring Motifs

Footsteps

Apparently, I love writing about footsteps. To me, they have multiple connotations. First, they are somewhat indistinct – you don’t really know who’s making that sound. Consequently, when Vincent recognizes Mark by his footsteps in the last chapter, it shows that he knows him really well. Second, footsteps have a pattern. They are regular, rhythmic, and as such they suggest regularity, order and a touch of the inevitable. Further, footsteps are one of the sound cues I like working with. Sound has interesting properties for humans, who are primarily vision-based animals. As such, there’s a certain awkwardness and imprecision in this. You think it’s something, but you’re not sure.

Pairs of Guns

The most literal reading of “Two Guns” might be Mark’s two-fisted combat style, but pairs are everywhere in the story. Let’s just look at guns for this one. Aside from Mark’s armament, there are Sharon’s Berettas (a symbolic “gift” from Mark), Sharon’s choice of Beretta versus Glock, the contrast between Mark’s suppressed .45 Colt and Nikolai’s Makarov, Vincent’s pairing of pistol and sniper rifle. Done presents a semi-subversion with his assault rifle during The Trooper, wielding a rifle with a second weapon attached. He’s also the most self-sufficient character, not particularly attached to anyone.

The Cold

It’s winter in many characters’ hearts, too, as they choose cold obligations over their emotions. Cold is also professional – note how descriptions of warmth and comfort appear mostly in conjunction with Sharon, who’s not quite as ridiculously competent as the criminals. Mark slips on ice…laid low by his refusal to go with his heart.

Expats

It seems nobody’s really at home in this New York City. Mark’s from West Virginia (I don’t think I officially mentioned that anywhere yet) and came to NYC as a teenager. Sharon’s first-gen American to Irish immigrants. Vincent’s Italian. Nikolai, Boris and Berkovitz managed to get out of the Soviet Union, obviously. Alfredo and Alex are from Colombia, as is Silvestro. Whitton and Karen are more squarely American, though.

Weapons of Choice

Mark

Mark has Browning Hi-Power pistols up his sleeves in this timeframe. This actually presents an upgrade from the earliest rig, which used Colt .45…but then upgraded to the Hi-Power because reloading the sleeve-holstered guns was a hassle and he needed the capacity. He stayed with a Browning design, though – Mark needs reliability and ruggedness in his weapons. The Hi-Power is single-action only and doesn’t qualify for the “Wonder Nine” trend of the 80s, and put together with the age of the design it gives Mark a distinct old-school flavor. Also, Mark doesn’t like double-action pistols because the heavier trigger pull on the first shot throws him off. (Though not heavy trigger pulls in general, just the variation. It would be fairly bad if he couldn’t use a gun with heavy pull, since stock Hi-Power pistols are pretty stiff. And he eventually relents with the USPs, though those go back to .45.) Fortunately for him, the Hi-Power got an update in the 80s to have an ambidextrous safety, among other things, so he didn’t need to go hunting for a custom “lefty”. Also, we see the beginning of a trend here – last generation’s main weapon becomes backup in the next iteration. Hi-Power pistols have a magazine disconnect, which – as we recall from Rising Son – will go on to bite Mark’s “brother” in the ass. On a future note, the Hi-Power uses essentially the same operating principle as the Heckler & Koch USP (which is arguably Mark’s signature weapon), so the Browning legacy lives on in Mark’s choice of handgun.

He still carries the .45 Colt as a suppressed weapon. The Colt’s a fairly good choice for that, on account of being a very common and easy to procure weapon. (Of course, as we find out, Mark didn’t take advantage of that. He didn’t rotate this gun – possibly as a consequence of using it as secondary and simply forgetting about it.) Also, the .45 caliber is good for suppressing since its normal load is subsonic – one of Mark’s great annoyances is keeping separate stockpiles of cold-loaded ammo for suppressed weapons with normally supersonic calibers and the reliability problems that brings. (One of the reasons he doesn’t use a suppressed 9mm.) Added benefit with the Colt: The heavy suppressor keeps the slide from unlocking after firing, reducing sound and not throwing incriminating shell cases all over the place. It does have the disadvantage that you have to rack the slide manually, but hey, this isn’t a gun for an open firefight.

Vincent

Vincent prefers the battlefield ruggedness of Soviet weapons, acquiring them via Boris. He’s got the CZ 85 as his sidearm, which is an update of the more famous CZ 75. That is a double-action, double-stack magazine “Wonder Nine”, all steel and very reliable. The Czechs make good pistols. Understandably, Vincent carries only one in a cross-draw holster with a few spare magazines as he’s not a front-line fighter.

The Dragunov isn’t really a “sniper rifle”, it doesn’t have the range for it. But it’s good for medium-distance “reach out and touch someone” jobs, and as Vincent famously exploits, built like every Russian infantry weapon. The caliber it uses is a relatively old one, the 7.62x54R, which used to be used for machineguns and such. Consequently, while precision loads are the norm for the Dragunov, it’s capable of firing some…interesting bullet types. Like the explosive-tipped bullets that lead to flamethrower KABOOM for Nikolai’s henchman. As the Mythbusters showed, normal bullets don’t have the oomph to set off most flammables, and apparently the result of Done’s shot (hole in the tank, no explosion) was fairly typical for when flamethrowers were actually carried into battle.

Sharon

Sharon packs two the great “Wonder Nine” contenders of the 80s, as a sort of representation of her shaking up the establishment. Her official duty weapon is the Glock 17, which was filtering into the NYPD through the 80s. Glock pistols are double-action only and feature no external safety. Some people love ‘em, some people hate ‘em. It’s not my cup of tea, personally, but you have to admire the resilience of the little buggers.

She also grabs two Beretta 92 pistols from the armory at the hotel and uses those on Silvestro’s yacht, as well as when she confronts Mark. The 92 is kind of a strange weapon, if you ask me. It was obviously good enough to become the US Military sidearm, but it gets a lot of flak over supposed reliability issues. And a lot of people didn’t want to give up their Colts for it. It’s also fairly large and heavy, but that helps the accuracy and recoil. It’s the iconic John Woo weapon. Also of note is that this means both of Sharon’s gun models are European in origin but fairly well “Americanized”, paralleling her character.

Nikolai

Shown with a Makarov PB. If you look at the stats in the 2.0 Core, you might think that it’s just a normal Makarov with a suppressor tacked on to the muzzle, but the pistol was actually significantly reworked. Part of the suppressor is permanently integrated into the body, the other part can be removed. It makes for a pretty good assassin’s weapon, but is far from the only gun the Russians tried to whip up in that mold. Somewhat held back by the low capacity and the fact that it has to slow down a supersonic round, but eh. Nikolai has the finesse to go with it and it makes for a good backup weapon, but in the end it can’t stand up to Mark’s raw firepower.

Two Guns Finale - Brothers in Arms

2008-05-19T00:58:00.000+02:00

A thousand ideas bounced through Karen Ayers's head, none of them attached to any significant chance of success. She just hadn't expected Simmons here - who would have? - and now he was reaping the reward of going against expectations. Of course, she figured, if he went out of his way to ambush her, which must have been worth the incredible risk of getting caught. There was only one reasonable inference. He was here to kill her, no doubt because she had proven herself dangerous.

"Relax," he said, reading the tension in her body like an open book. "I don't mean to hurt you."

That kept her from screaming right there, but didn't make her move - or speak. He raised his eyebrows, waiting for a response, then shook his head softly.

"I've got something for you," he said. "Took me a while to get why you thought I killed Berkovitz."
"Come on now," she said, in a death-defying sort of mocking inflection, "you're here to tell me that there's one man you didn't kill? What difference does it make to you?"
"I see I'm not being obvious enough," he said. "Sit down, please. I'll explain."

Inviting her to have a seat in her own home. Great. Karen obeyed, after a fashion, when she sat down on the carpet and crossed her legs, fixing a "Story time?" look at Mark. The hitman crouched down in response, ready to spring up and run for it. Good, good; at least he didn't feel safe.

"A couple of questions," he began, "just to make sure I'm on the right track. First off, Berkovitz's body has been found."
"A week ago, actually. We didn't get a positive ID until after you killed Detective Collins."
"And with that ID came the evidence that I killed him? From Whitton?"
"Yes..."
"Does that strike you as convenient?"
"..."

Mark reached under his coat. He pulled out a plastic bag with a Makarov PB in it, then tossed it onto the floor.

"Nikolai Danko killed Berkovitz," he said. "I have a witness, and this is Danko's gun."
"Where'd you get this? We took the whole BAT apart looking for that."
"Danko dropped it before I killed him. I thought it'd make a good souvenir."
"Alright. And that witness would be..."
"Boris Dolvitch."
"That doesn't help your case at all. Anybody who caught Matlock last Friday could nail Dolvitch with something if he showed up in court," she said, "and the gun..."

A pause. Mark's face showed a slight grin.

"I know it's no good for prints or profile," he explained, "but just how did I get tied to Berkovitz? Let me guess, there was a slug..."
"...a .45 slug, matched the ballistic profile on the Colt you shot Collins with. Whitton must've kept that bullet from one of your earlier targets." She looked at Mark. "That wasn't very smart of you, to keep using the same gun..."
"Call me sentimental," Mark said. "Besides, it's in the evidence room now, so you can sleep soundly knowing that I won't be using that Colt any longer. The point is, Whitton needed a good explanation for Berkovitz and I was an easy target. But he screwed this one up. The gun can prove it."
"No, it can't," Ayers said, sighing. "It can't. ME's report says it was a large-caliber subsonic..."
"Then you have to ask yourself, why is that guy lying?"

Karen considered that for a moment, gears grinding despite the exhaustion. Why wouldn't Whitton have an ME on retainer? He would have to, just to keep the deaths of sanctioned criminals under the radar...

"I'm not saying this is 100%", Mark continued, "but it's a start. You're clever, you can use this. Lean on the examiner. If Whitton could pressure him, he's got dirty laundry. And if you can find that, get him to testify, you've got Whitton on the ropes."

She nodded, finally. He rose from the ground, walking past her.

"This doesn't help you," she said.
"Didn't expect it to," he replied. "See you."

And while she wondered whether that was a parting phrase or a threat, he left her apartment, closing the door behind himself. She listened to his footsteps growing weak with distance. An elevator pinging open, a short delay, then the dull thump of closing doors. She waited until she couldn't hear the whirr of the elevator's winch any longer, then got up, walked over to her phone and called 911. Her eyes never left the pistol on the ground.

If nothing else, it was worth a little head start.

---

Vincent Ratioli stood before the statue of Abraham Lincoln, a heavy fur-lined coat protecting him. It was the morning of the 27th, and Christmas was officially over. The 80s only had a few more days left themselves. Prospect Park was quiet around him, no visitors the concert grove at such a time. The sky was clear, perhaps the best weather New York City had seen in the last few days - no snow, no heavy wind. The footsteps behind him were ponderous, but he knew that they did not belong to Mark.

"A strange man," Boris Dolvitch said, his eyes locked on the Lincoln statue.
"I never understood it myself," Vincent admitted.
"How is your boss?"
"Safe."

And so they waited, with nothing to say. Eventually, the chirping of Vincent's watch broke the silence.

"8?" Boris asked; Vincent nodded. "Perhaps," Boris mused, "Marcus meant 8 in the evening."
"I doubt that," Vincent said.

They waited five minutes, then ten, without moving from their spots; they still stood there when a fresh pair of footsteps approached. These stopped beside Vincent; he chanced a glance to the side and spotted Mark, whose eyes were fixed firmly on the statue.

"I knew you'd come," Vincent said.
"I didn't," Mark said. "But that's how it is. Every step along the way, you hesitate...but you walk it."
"A good man doubts," Boris added, "a good soldier does."
"Boris," Mark said, "if you could give us a minute..."

The old soldier nodded, walking off to his car. It was better this way, he thought, an old man like him shouldn't be standing around in the cold...

"I'm just letting you know that I'm leaving the city," Mark said. "Don't know when I'll be back."
"You're gambling with your life," Vincent said. "You didn't tell Alex that you would be here."
"Did you tell her, then?"
"No," Vince admitted. "Not my place to say. She didn't want to see you, anyway."

Mark bit his lip.

"She didn't want to see me, either. Or anyone, for that matter."
"So who's watching her now?" Mark asked.
"Done's on the job. He's a stranger, so she doesn't mind him so much."
"Did she tell you..." Mark began, then caught himself. "No. She didn't."

Vincent shook his head.

"Tell me what? And why can't you tell me?" he asked wistfully. "Why are we so busy keeping secrets from each other?"
"It wouldn't change anything."
"It would change everything," Vince said quietly. "I'm not stupid, Mark. I think you're running from what you've done, and what she's done. Alex betrayed us, didn't she? That would make you a free man..."
"No," Mark said. "No." He took a deep breath through clenched teeth, all his strength focused on this one point...
"You know how this works, Mark. Either she did it then or you're doing it now."

Mark cried.

It wasn't a wetness, nor dirt in his eyes. Tears streamed down his face, first a few, then a few more. His breathing grew ragged and his shoulders slumped. It was like watching a building, under assault from the elements for decades, finally give in. First a crack, immaterial by itself but growing, then it spread out, grew, until the whole thing began to sag into itself. The terrible inevitability, the moment it breaks so hard to pin down - only knowing when it has passed. This, then, was a broken man: standing like a marionette, every fiber shouting for truth and every fiber shouting for loyalty.

"Protect her," he managed to whisper, "protect her."

And at that, the tears...just stopped. The feeling stayed, but something forced him back up, the same old power dragging him by the strings.

"Goodbye," Mark said, never meeting Vincent's eyes. And as he turned away and walked, Vincent's gaze remained with Lincoln. If he had watched Mark get into Boris's car, that would have been grounds for going to war with Dolvitch; if he had known where Mark was going, it would have been the first target for as many assassins as he could find. More secrets. More looking away at the wrong time. By the time Boris's car left the parking lot, Vincent's stare was burning holes through the statue. And yet, no matter how much he wanted to, there was nothing he could change. He closed his eyes, listened to the nothing around him and shivered. In the end, the winter was all that remained.

New York City was cold.

Two Guns 27 - The Queen & The Soldier

2008-05-13T02:19:00.000+02:00

Mark made no move to leave the center of the room or to say anything; in response, Alex slowly rose from her chair, grabbed her cane and walked over to Mark. A brief pause, then she let the cane drop free and embraced him. He returned the hug reluctantly. When she took a step back and their eyes met, Mark spoke.

"There's something I need to ask you."
"Does that have something to do with your dramatic entry?" she asked, a small smile on her lips. "And where's Vincent?"
"Vincent? Haven't seen him yet."
"I thought he was going to put together a few guys to break you out..."
"I'm sure he did," Mark said. "But I got bored waiting for him."
"I was wondering what kept you. Now, first thing, I need to make some phone calls, we have to get you out of the city."
"No," Mark said, and left it at that for five seconds. "The question first."
"Well?" she replied. "Out with it, what's so important?"
"Did you have an agreement with Silvestro?"

Their eyes locked for a second, then Mark turned away and took a few steps towards the south wall of the office. The decor was still mostly the same as in Alfredo's time, warm hardwood floor and a collection of souvenirs and doodads in display cases. Mark's path led him a few steps closer to the weapons of the small collection.

"What do you want to hear?" Alex shot back from behind his back; in times gone by, Mark would've found it immensely rude to turn his back on his boss, but he was focused on other matters.
"I want to hear whatever you're willing to tell me, Alex." He opened one of the display cases, but kept his hands away from the contents. "Ayers showed me a file on Silvestro's activities in Colombia. I've seen photos of you two together, I've heard a confession from his driver that he drove you to his mansion and back to the hospital."

He paused for a second.

"All that proves is that you were at his mansion and talked to him. For all I know, you smuggled yourself in to steal the yacht prints and told him to fuck off. I mean, that's kind of a scenario that makes sense to me. So, was it like that?"

His hand snaked out for the scabbard of a half-forgotten broadsword, so close but not touching it, so close...

"No," Alex admitted. Mark's hand snapped closed around the scabbard like a bear trap.
"Then tell me what happened."
"...I fucked up," she finally said. "I thought I could trick him, but I..." she said, then stopped, biting her lip. The more her hands trembled, the tighter Mark's grip on the scabbard grew. "Between you and Vincent, I thought...I thought we could take an attack. That it would get Daddy to move again. It was only a matter of time until something hit us...yeah, I talked to Silvestro. Fed him enough info that he'd be tempted to risk an attack, and it got me into his house for the blueprints, you know, just as insurance..."
"Clever," Mark conceded, his knuckles turning white.
"And then the Sharon thing happened, and he hired the mercs to hit the hotel and I didn't see it coming until you were out and Vince went to help you and..."

A small creek of tears carved its way down her cheeks, even as she kept the sobs under control. Everything in Mark wanted him to turn around, look her in the eyes, comfort her. Everything else kept him frozen in position.

"They killed everyone, Mark. Everyone. And I was here, holding Daddy's hand. Watching him die."

He turned around, finally. The sword travelled with him.

"I did a bad thing," she whispered, almost choking on her words. "And then you killed Silvestro but the Russians came and you killed Sharon and...I don't know. I don't know anymore. Everything happens so fast now."
"Alex," he said, almost self-consciously moving the sword behind his back when he saw her stare at the ground. "I want you to look at me."

He took a step toward, then another as she involuntarily shrinked back. His left arm shot out, and she closed her eyes. She didn't know what it felt like to be choked, but she called upon every bit of steel in herself. It didn't happen. Instead, she felt his rough hand on the soft skin of her cheeks, lifting her chin. Slowly, she dared to open her eyes, releasing another set of tears.

"I can't forgive you," Mark said, his voice sounding like it was trying to tear itself free from his throat.

A chaste peck on her cheek, a taste of her bitter tears, the heavy breath of his nose wheezing past her ear. When she opened her eyes again, he had already turned away, his footsteps unsteady but aimed for the exit.

"Where are you going?" she asked, still unsure. He froze, a few seconds between him and the door. His hand twisted and turned the scabbard, fidgeting for something to do. But he said nothing.

And just like that, he walked out of her office.

---

It wasn't fair.

Whatever other reasons there were, John Done was the first to try to speak to Mark as he descended the stairs. That was it, in a nutshell. No annoyance, no specific antipathy, no attempt to hold Mark back. Just a "Hey, Mark..."

And then the lightning Mark had bottled inside discharged.

With a wallop that would've impressed Mike Tyson, he bunched his empty left hand into a fist and struck Done's face square in the middle, a hammer blow that sent the hardened mercenary straight to the carpet - conscious, but bleeding profusely from the mass of meat, skin and cartilage that had been his nose two seconds ago. Mark didn't even stop to gloat, his steps growing more confident again. Dollar rushed past him, wordlessly ducking down to help Done; Vincent chanced standing in Mark's way.

"What the hell, Mark? Where are you going?" he asked.
"8 AM tomorrow, Lincoln at Prospect," Mark replied, sidestepping his friend.
"...what?"

Mark rounded the next corner, not looking back. Vincent just stood there, caught in the headlights.

"What the fuck just happened?" he asked nobody in particular.

---

Karen Ayers wasn't having a particularly good day.

She unlocked the front door of her apartment at 11 PM and stepped inside, her handbag dropping from her shoulder like a burden with her eyes half closed. When you don't have a lot, simple things become precious. Karen, at this moment, wanted nothing so much like a warm shower. And maybe to wake up tomorrow before her alarm. Not so much to ask.

Fumbled for switch. Hands. Found switch. Switch. Lights, please?

"Good evening."

Voice. Eyes opened.

Mark Simmons stood in her living room, between her and the telephone. She felt a wave of something rise inside her, at the horizon. Fear, anger, relief, she didn't know.

Simmons. That bastard.

And just like that, Ayers's day got worse.

Two Guns 26 - You Belong to the City

2008-05-04T22:18:00.002+02:00

It was the 26th of December, 1989, and the weather was turning for just this night. No snow, no ice, just a clear night - if you looked upwards, you might have caught a glimpse of the stars above. Distant light, cutting through the darkness of the universe - just to be overshadowed by a neon sign for an adult bookstore.

This is worth mentioning insofar as said adult bookstore had made its nest across the street from a hospital, presumably catering to lonely doctors and patients in doing so. As if to thumb its nose at pedestrians with more refined tastes, a hydrant stood in front of the shop, keeping that piece of the sidewalk clear of cars and the store in full view. Its windows were full of gaudy text in harsh competition with the main neon sign, an aquarium of great white sharks in the dangerous business of adult toys. The alpha of the pack, at least momentarily, was a singular ad singing the praises of a pump designed to enlarge a customer's...confidence.

By two to three inches, or your money back.

Combined with the clear air that night, the bookstore's visibility reached a maximum of offensiveness. A maximum of such extent - perhaps comparable with the confidence of the "nubian stallions" advertised in another corner of the window - that a hypothetical passerby would have cheered when a box van risked a hefty traffic fine for stopping on this stretch of the road and blocking the view.

What was inside that box van was, however, decidedly less wholesome than marital aids of any stripe. Witness this fine collection of machines, not of pleasure but of death, both in the human and the metal flavor. Guns, many guns, a rolling arsenal courtesy of the Ingues cartel. Men to handle those guns. And a plan.

"You just keep circling the block, Kyla," Vincent said through the small window between the rear and the driver's cabin. "We'll call you for pickup when we're ready."

The teenage girl nodded, a facade of seriousness covering her face. She wasn't the best driver, just the worst shot of the group, and that didn't sit well with her at all. Mostly because it meant that she'd have to do this while letting Dollar play commando, and that was a thought that troubled her greatly. The good Doctor, by contrast, didn't seem too concerned. With a snappy EMT uniform, a mediocre fake work ID and his attitude, there was no question that he'd be able to do what he had to do. The Colt beneath his shirt was a strange feeling, like hooking up with an old girlfriend after not seeing her for years. He didn't have a problem with that; once a soldier, always a soldier.

Likewise, Boris found himself becoming Lt. Col. Dolvich with frightening ease; now a lefty by default, his grip on the AK might have been steadier once, but he was just there for backup. His right index finger grabbed the handguard as well as it could...so much for the fastest trigger of the East. Stay in the van. Come out blasting if things go wrong.

Vincent was his usual self, classy suit and a bouquet of flowers. Plausible visitor too rich to care about the actual hours. CZ85 under his jacket, lockpicks in his pockets. He fully expected to have to free Mark from something - probably handcuffs, maybe something worse. He had the finesse part covered.

Everything else, it seemed, would be Done's fault. The odd man out with no plausible aliby, Done would just have to stay a few steps behind and keep out of sight. His sports bag held everything from his M16A2 to a large bolt cutter and some explosives. Just to cover the bases; Vincent hoped that this would be a dull night for Done. But better to have it and not need it...

"Everybody ready?"

Nods all around.

"Go," Vince said.

On the negative side, there was nobody there to watch the (quite badass-looking) way the warriors three emerged from the back of the van. On the positive side, there was nobody there to watch three very suspicious-looking men exit a van full of guns, so it balanced out somewhat. Vincent knew it was stupid the second they were doing it, but that couldn't be helped; he set his sights on the front door, Dollar walked towards the ambulance drop-off area, and Done just stuck to the shadows as well as 250 pounds of muscle could.

---

In a way, it was almost ridiculous. Getting to the nurse at the front desk, easy. Getting permission to sneak upstairs and just leave the flowers for his girlfriend, easy. The hard part? Listening to her life story. From her deadbeat dad to her deadbeat boyfriend all the way up to having lost her favorite pen just this day, it was the most overwrought tale of sadness Vince had heard all week.

"And just last Tuesday, I asked Josh, I was totally like, 'Why do you never get me flowers?', you know?" she asked, both angry and close to tears, somehow constantly so for the last five minutes. Vince just stood there, smiling but slightly dumbfounded, desperately trying to end this line of conversation. Attaccabotina, he thought, shut up. Who knew that flowers triggered emotional breakdowns?

"Che coglione, this Josh of yours. I would never treat my girlfriend like that."
"She's a lucky girl, then."
"That's what I hope, at least. See you."

Walk walk walk walk walk...

"Hey, Vincent!" she called after him. Cazzo!
"Yes?"
"What's her name?"
"...her name?"
"Yes, her name." She pointed to her computer's screen. "Or do you know the room number?"
"I can find her," Vince said with a small smile.
"Still, are you going to tell me her name?"
"No, I...uh, I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if you know, then you will show it when you meet her, and then she'll know."
"Oh."
"Very jealous, she's very jealous," Vince insisted. It was times like these, when he was trying to pass himself off as a normal guy, that all those years of speaking perfectly acceptable English seemed to mean nothing. Every word was a struggle, every sentence a war against the Italian that kept bubbling into his head. He felt like a naive immigrant all over again.

Fortunately, the nurse didn't respond to that; after a short beat, he turned back onto his path, disappearing into the next staircase.

---

"Evenin', Dollar said to the shift supervisor, a man with a widow's peak large enough to park a Volkswagen Beetle on and traces of dull gray running through his black hair. He looked like there'd been a brushfire somewhere along the family tree, an ethnic grab bag with fifty pounds of surplus value tacked to a last-generation chassis. He didn't acknowledge Dollar as a person, just as a procedure, holding out a clipboard that Dollar could've signed with a pawprint for all the man seemed to care. The off-loading area was quiet, that rare night of statistical abberation when there was nothing but nothing going on.

"Holla if ya need me," Dollar said; the supervisor responded with a grunt, turning the page in his book. For his part, Dollar felt like he'd wasted some good preparation but decided to capitalize on the opening anyway; he slipped into the back, unlocked a service door and beckoned for Done to walk in.

"Sumthin' happenin'?" the supervisor called.
"Just lettin' the funk out," Dollar replied, while Done hurried up the stairs to meet with Vince.

---

"You could've asked her for Simmons," Done said as he and Vince climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. "Would have saved us some time."
"Bad idea," Vince countered, still cautious from almost being busted at the front door. "One, she would've known that I wasn't a normal visitor because he's under fuckin' police protection, and two, I'm not going to tell this woman that I brought flowers for a guy."
"You can bring flowers for...a friend."
"Uh huh. Say, nurse, I got those flowers here, can you tell me where my best friend's room is? I'm very straight, by the way."
"Get with the times, Ratioli," Done said. "Nobody cares."
"Besides, we don't need it. The cops like to use the fourth floor, top of the hospital. We just look for the cop, I stun him, you stay back."
"The simple plan," Done said, nodding his assent.

Vince grabbed a stun baton from Done's sports bag, then undid the strap on the bouquet and worked the shocker into the middle before retying it. It wouldn't stand up to a close inspection, but it did place the baton in Vince's hand - all he had to do was walk up to the cop and stick him with the prongs at the tip. Doable.

Well, it would've been, had there been a cop to stun. Vince looked left, right, then left again, dumbfounded.

"Either they're incompetent as all hell," Vince said, "or they moved him."
"We came all the way," Done replied. "Let's check."

Lengthy searching was averted when Done spotted one of the doors creaking from the A/C, not quite closed. On a hunch, Vince drew his CZ 85, keeping the stun baton in his left hand for close combat while Done stayed back, ready to cover their retreat. Vince opened the door carefully, stepping into the room. In this manner, he found the cop lying on the floor, moaning softly; Vince gave him a few seconds of 50,000 volts, just to make sure he wouldn't do anything stupid while Vince searched the room. That, in turn, proved to be wildly unnecessary; the single bed had obviously held Mark not too long ago, and the closet was still open, discarded hangers and all revealing a rather hasty dressing process, though Vince couldn't imagine why they'd keep Mark's clothes in the room - probably didn't have room for those in the evidence room after confiscating all the weapons, Vince thought with a wry grin. Inspecting the bed, he found two pairs of handcuffs fastened to the bed's rails, but both were sprung open. On the floor, a dissembled ballpoint pen sprawled, its point still stuck in the lock of the door.

Vincent's grin deepened. Mark hadn't been moved, he had done the relocation by himself.

---

Half a city away, Mark didn't look very good. In the last few hours, he'd gotten a slap in the face for copping a feel, which was all the more insulting when the bounty of this adventure was a measly ballpoint pen. Then he had spent thirty minutes on picking a lock with the point of said pen, especially difficult when reaching required doing it behind his back and intentionally dislocating his good shoulder. And popping it back in, all the while suppressing the grunts of pain enough not to alert the cop outside. Gotten dressed, found every part of his clothing except for the socks in the closet. (Why the socks? God, why the socks?) Snuck to the door - in boots, without socks, hurting like hell -, picked lock on the door. With a ballpoint. And quietly, again. Surprised cop, put him in blood choke, got elbowed right in the broken rib and stayed quiet. Snuck out, robbed a tourist for cash and felt bad enough to apologize. Grabbed a taxi and felt his wound bleeding through the stitches and bandages, again. A laundry list of small things that all aligned to make his day miserable.

And now he was half a block from the Ingues mansion, and he was walking the last mile, so to speak. He was tired as hell and mad as hell, and somehow this inferno-centric math worked out to letting him stay on his feet without fainting. His gaze was fixed upon his target, locked on with the tenacity of a cruise missile with no taste for the stars above. He took the back entrance, encountering no backtalk from the few mercs that still remained in the house; a sizeable reduction in forces had occurred, it seemed. He was getting tired of all the important things happening without him.

No Vincent, no Done in the house. Took the staircase, mercs let him pass right through. Clear shot to Alexandra's office.

His steps grew plodding, slowed down. It wasn't the exhaustion per se, but his anger was being counter-acted by hesitation. Hadn't all of this started with him being too bold, acting too soon? For a few seconds, he stood and thought, genuine doubt seeping into what seemed like laser-focussed determination on the way here. What had driven him this far, what demanded that he go further, hurtling towards a destination he did not know anymore? There it was, again, the siren song of yielding, giving in for once in his life.

But he pressed on, finally. Like every time he had met one of those little speed-bumps of life, a point of no return, he put the pedal to the metal. And so he stepped forward, through the door, all the way up to her desk. She looked at him all the way through his walk, an expression on her small face that he couldn't identify through the haze of the night, the darkness that followed him into the house.

The door wanted no part of this; what little momentum remained from Mark's charge through was arrested by the coiled spring inside the small lever attached to the door's top edge. It gently drew the door back into the frame, snapping it closed. Outside, the mercs stood in perfect, frozen stances. The stillness of this night had come to an end, finally, the rare, bare glimpses of the starlit sky rapidly fading under a renewed assault of heavy clouds.

No, this night wouldn't be quiet.

Two Guns 25 - Knockin' on Heaven's Door

2008-04-27T17:38:00.000+02:00

Mark started breathing again. The blinding pain was slowly fading, shrinking to a background noise quiet enough to unclench his teeth, open his eyes, allow his finger to step off the trigger and let it reset. With a grunt of effort, he rose from the ground, unsteady on his feet. Every breath brought new stabs of pain; he felt the surface of his light Kevlar vest until he found a hole in it. There's something to be said even for a Type IIA vest, in a pinch - but bulletproof this wasn't, and Mark had to fight back the urge to throw up. Deep breaths, focus on the pain, let it keep you awake...fight against the blackness on the edges. The pain was extreme, even by Mark's standards, but the adrenaline rush kept him on his feet, helped him stagger to the door even as the now unbuckled vest slid to the floor.

In a way, Sharon was marginally luckier. Dead before she hit the ground, she was already getting her wings.

After the apartment door, it was the hallway that tortured Mark, made him fight for every inch. Doors were opened just a crack, fearful eyes on the staggering killer. There was a handrail, and Mark used the hell out of it; he relied on his left arm, using muscles away from where his flesh had been graced by a visit from Mr. Hydra-Shok. By contrast, his right arm was rapidly going numb, white knuckles arranged around the cooling Colt. Doors in front of him closed, doors behind him opened. He didn't hear the footsteps, but when he climbed into the elevator and turned around, he saw the faces.

---

Mark slipped on the sidewalk.

In any other context, it might have been funny, a momentary annoyance at best, but this was then and Mark could feel his blood dripping onto the ice as he struggled to keep going. Some traction, that wasn't so much to ask for, but he failed to gain a foothold for what seemed like forever, flopping about like a fish out of water. He wanted to lie down, to accept the calming cool for the fever in his heart. He wanted it like he wanted the last five minutes to be part of that fever, like he wanted to go to sleep and wake up. He'd even talk to her about it, let her mock him...anything but this.

Get up.

To sleep, knowing he'd wake up in her arms. Somewhere.

Get up.

His right arm started shivering, dropping the Colt onto the ground. He brought the arm in, pressing it against his side.

Get up.

Mark gnashed his teeth, and then he did what he always did, he tapped that hideous strength and he got back on his feet. Adrenaline ebbing and determination soaring, he walked with as much dignity as he could muster, still in mortal danger but back in control. He walked to his car and unlocked the driver's door. The seat welcomed him; it was easier to breathe sitting down, driving back the black from this vision once more. He started the car. He drove away.

Three blocks away, a flurry of police cars sped past him on the road, heading for her apartment. Fatal curiosity acted out again, Mark reflexively turned on the police scanner in his glove box.

"Officer down at 163rd and Riverside, I repeat, officer down..."

Enough.

---

A red light, that's what he would remember, a red light. Brake the car, take into account the slippery road. Come to a perfect stop. Play by the rules.

Don't kill cops.

This light wasn't red, it was rather blue, and that's when Mark realized that he was in a hospital. A real hospital, not a back alley meat shop like Dollar's joint. His right side was still protesting with every breath, even though heavy bandages provided support. Probably broke a rib, Mark thought. It was like somebody had turned a page in his book; removed from the injury in time and space, he made a dispassionate, reasonable guess. There were details, like how he'd gotten to the hospital, but that was to be filed away for later consideration. Mostly, he tried to get worked up again, tried to unravel the tapestry enough to pick out a good suspect and extract payment. Hate had taught him what he knew, kept him safe and sane all those years; love had only tortured him this last week. So much for that.

"You're under arrest," she said. At this stage, Mark was happy to hear even that. Then he realized that it wasn't Sharon saying this. He raised his head off the pillow and tilted his chin forward.

Ayers. Karen fuckin' Ayers.

Hello, hate. Good to have you back.

"Do I look like I give a fuck?" he said hoarsely, his head falling back onto the pillow. Okay, so maybe getting even could wait for a few more minutes.
"No. You don't 'give a fuck' that you almost killed yourself. You don't 'give a fuck' that there's good people out there who dial 911 when they see somebody slump over at the wheel. You don't 'give a fuck' that you're now two cops in the hole," Ayers said, pausing for effect. "I'd say you're pretty good at this, at not giving a fuck. That must be a truly awesome gift from the heavens themselves and I hope you enjoy that little feeling of bravado. I'm blessed in different ways, I'm almost kind of a psychic. From that springs my sincere invitation to revel in your stupidity, because I've read your cards and your life is going to be the definition of pain from here on."

Mark's repertoire of snappy comebacks seemed exhausted for the moment, so he stayed quiet.

"Just so we're clear," she continued, "I wasn't screwing with you yesterday. I've been working all week, phone calls and favors, anything I could get my hands on to trade favors with you. Because I thought that this wasn't the time to go for 100%, just take out the acute crisis and leave the rest for people with more endurance than I have. And hey, it's not like this was personal. I wanted to believe that she was getting to you, that you'd be out of my hair soon enough without anybody getting hurt. I thought, let's be reasonable. I talked to Collins, I talked to you..."
"Collins," Mark said forcefully as his mind latched onto that. "How...how is she?"

For a second, he could feel Karen's look trying to bore holes into his face.

"She's dead," she said, matter-of-factly. "Are you playing with me?"
"No..."
"Then quit acting stupid. You shoot people, they die. Maybe my standards are unreasonable, but I learned that before I went to law school."
"I just had to be sure."
"She's dead, Simmons. EMTs got there about ten minutes after you shot her, but they couldn't do anything. If this means anything to you...I'm not going to go after her. She'll get her funeral and a nice eulogy. The sacrifice of deep-cover work for the OCB. And all the dirt is going to disappear. I still don't have anything on Whitton, by the way. All the little secrets I know are about to get buried."

She stifled a hollow laugh.

"It's too bad we only know who the heroes are after they die."
"And if this means anything to you," Mark began, "I wish I hadn't been forced to do this."
"Forced to?" she spat back, anger driving blood into her cheeks. "Forced to?! Who had his hand on the trigger, Simmons? Don't you even start talking about being forced to do anything. You had every opportunity to back down, to save her and yourself. But your much vaunted loyalty took care of all that awful thinking for you. So don't play the victim. All you are is a coward. A running dog."

Mark kept silent, but that didn't slow her down.

"Fuck your omerta. Fuck your friends, fuck your bullets and fuck you. You don't fool me for a second. It's all good, as long as you don't think about it too much, right? Well, here's something to think about," she said, recomposing herself.

She bowed down to open her briefcase; Mark's arm snaked out involuntarily, like he could fix this with more violence - but the cling! of metal on metal was the only sound he heard, as if the handcuffs that chained him to the bed had only just appeared. No matter; she had retrieved a case file and opened it, now she was flipping through the pages upon pages.

"On the 5th of October," she read aloud, "Sr. Rodriguez asked me to drive him to the Our Lady Maria hospital. I waited outside, and like on Wednesday, I expected him to come back out after ten minutes. I remember that it was very hot that day; I rolled down the window and saw Sr. Rodriguez step outside, twenty minutes after he had entered the hospital. Behind him, I saw a young girl, walking about with ungainly crutches. Sr. Rodriguez helped her down the stairs, and then into the car. He told me to drive them to Sr. Rodriguez's mansion. The girl seemed very serious and reserved; I do not recall them speaking one word on the entire drive...later, in the evening, he had me drive her back to the hospital. She said 'Thank you' when I helped her back up the stairs. That's the only time I saw her..."

Karen dumped the file onto Mark's bed.

"The DEA nailed Silvestro Rodriguez's driver in Panama. We got a ten-page confession this morning - that was part of it. I'm going to give you another hint - there was only one patient in the hospital who fit that description. I think we both know who that was. I know you know who Silvestro Rodriguez is. So, what I'm asking myself here is...and maybe you'll indulge me and answer me this question: Did you know? Did you know that your boss was crooked and supported her anyway?"

It's not possible for a man of Mark's build to snap the chain on police-issue handcuffs without tools. Mark's attempt was still quite credible, though. At least strong enough to tear out some stitches.

"I'm wasting my time," Karen said, almost resigned. "I've got better things to do, Simmons. Better than trying to reason with you. Better than sitting here, making you listen when I can't make you understand." She got up, straightened her blouse, then turned back to him, as if she had to fit one more thought into this. "I have work to do," she said, and then she walked out.

Mark just laid there, a bubbling cauldron of feelings in his head ready to boil over at the slightest provocation. Crimson poured into his bandages.

He didn't acknowledge the winter any more. The blood and the hate were there to keep him warm.

Two Guns 24 - Who Wants to Live Forever?

2008-04-18T19:18:00.003+02:00

All the way through the taxi ride, Sharon Collins hadn't looked at the driver. She had asked him to turn off the radio, she talked to him - well, mostly he talked and she listened. He was Polish, of all things; they talked about Sunday Mass for fifteen minutes. Sharon didn't ask him where she could find God again. There was nothing Sharon could do to help Mark, but Detective Collins might find a way. Manhattan drove past her, taking her all the way back to her apartment. It seemed like the snow was letting up a little bit now, though the sky was still overcast. Probably too much to ask for good weather at a time like this. The Beretta beneath her jacket tugged on the holster straps, heavier than before. In a perverse kind of way, she longed to feel the grip of her issue Glock again. Surely, she couldn't show up back for duty without it, and that's exactly what she was going to do - back on duty, try to get this mess fixed from the inside.

"I'm going back home soon," the driver said. "Sell my things, my taxi, go back."
"What for?" Sharon asked, not paying attention.
"There are new leaders now," he responded; Sharon couldn't see his smile.
"But it'll still be in shambles."
"Maybe, maybe," he said. "But I will be with my son. He is a man now, big strong man. My wife, my neighbors...letters are not the same. This country...is not my home. I lived here for fifteen years and it is not my home. What did you do, Woytja? What did you do in the free West? I drove a taxi. My apartment smells like cabbage soup, every day."
"Not good for honest people, is it?"
"Hm?"
"This city," Sharon said, with more emphasis. "It's not good for honest people."
"It's not," the driver agreed.

Sharon's foot touched a small duffel bag on the taxi's floor. One of ten she had found in Mark's house, filled with bundles of cash.

A duffel bag. Full of money. And he had ten.

Crime does pay.

It was enough to pull over, get a coffee, buy new clothes, try to call Mark and hang up after ten beeps. The driver waited for her, thanked her for his coffee. She'd barely broken in one bundle of money from the bag. All the way to her apartment, she counted the bundle, again and again, in lieu of putting it back into the duffel. She figured Mark might need it to make his exit, but now that the taxi was pulling to a stop in front of her home, she thought about that.

"This is for you," Sharon said, handing the bundle to the driver. The man turned around as she tried to open the door; she froze when she saw his face.
"Is this...?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"It's plane ticket money," she replied, and he nodded, understanding.

Random acts of kindness, enabled by blood money. Her moral compass was starting to look like a clock.

She shouldered the burden of the duffel bag as she finally got out. Somehow, she had expected her street to look different, but it didn't. She'd left it snowed in and she returned to it snowed in. Here she was, standing in the snow with hot money and a cold gun. She grabbed a different piece of metal from her pocket and unlocked the front door; a grey cat rushed past her for reasons of its own. Her house didn't have an elevator, so she took the stairs. The wood groaned under her steps, which would've been an insult if they weren't old enough to get away with it; keys still dangling from her hand, she tried to unlock the door but found it already open. Stepping into the apartment confirmed her suspicion.

Mark was there. Sitting on her couch, surrounded by dirty plates and sporting a healthy growth on his chin from lack of shaving. He looked at her with tired eyes.

"You look good," he said.
"You look like shit," she gave back, smiling for him.
"So much for my plan, huh?" he asked, forcing a small laugh through his clenched throat. "I'm tired."
"Did you sleep at all?"
"No...not really."
"You should've skipped town."
"This is the only thing I could do," Mark said, monotone again. "Try to draw the heat, give Alex more time to disappear."
"Falling on your sword, then?" she replied with a bitter undercurrent. "They should've called you Samurai."

No reply; Mark just stared at the ground.

"Did you hear the BOLO, Mark?" she asked. "If anybody finds you, they'll shoot first and ask questions later. This isn't just covering for Alex, it's suicide by cop."
"...maybe," he conceded.
"Do you want to die? Do you want to give your life for the cartel? Alex could have left town at any point, why is she still here?"
"I don't know, but..."
"But what?"
"But I have to."
"No, you don't. You've done enough for her, Mark, more than anyone could expect. But you're done. You're out. They'll kill you if you keep fighting. I couldn't live with that...that happening. Please, if not for you then for me...turn yourself in. We can go down to the station, nobody will lay a hand on you, I swear..."

Mark cut her off by standing up. He turned away from her, slumping his shoulders.

"I love you very much, Sharon. I don't know if I ever told you, but I love you with all my heart."

He took off his trench coat; she saw the suppressed .45 in its shoulder holster.

"But I can't do this."
"That doesn't matter anymore," she said. "I wouldn't be a very good person if I didn't try everything to save your life. I wouldn't be a very good cop if I didn't arrest you. Either way, you're coming with me."
"You came here to get your gun," he said. She nodded, and he knew it without seeing it. "So it's settled. You're the cop."
"And you're the killer."
"If that's how it's going to be..." he said, trailing off.

If Mark hadn't been facing away from her, or using a quick-draw holster, or maybe not wrecked with guilt, he might have managed to draw first. But he was, he wasn't and he was, so she had the Beretta out and aimed at him when he was still moving. In a split second, she had to make a choice.

She didn't.

He brought the Colt up, matching her Beretta with a well-oiled equalizer. Their eyes met, for the first time since she'd stepped into the apartment. Her fire was matched by his ice.

"Fancy meeting you here..." he drawled.

---

Two guns. Good versus evil, wrong versus wrong, right versus right.

Two worlds. Old versus new, 9mm versus .45, cop versus criminal.

Two shots. Loud versus suppressed, fire versus ice, love versus calculation, flesh versus Kevlar.

Two guns. Mexican stand-off, duel of will, duel.

One. One look of regret. One last breath.

Not two. Two never again.

Just one.

Last Man Standing.

Two Guns 23 - Der Kommissar

2008-04-13T06:11:00.001+02:00

The cold wind that grabbed Queens in general haunted the Flushing Meadows in particular. Mark grabbed the sides of his trench coat, drawing it closer to his body. He didn't need to glance at his watch to know he'd spent ten minutes on this park bench; assassination requires a good sense of timing. All things considered, he had a rather good spot, owing to the largely empty park; his vantage point gave him a direct look at the Unisphere. Just for kicks, Mark looked at the giant globe and tried to mentally place all African countries in their correct positions. It was slow going, especially after South Africa, but he persisted until he heard approaching footsteps.

Captain Paul Whitton sat down on the bench, joining Mark in looking at the gargantuan steel globe.

"Looks like shit now, doesn't it?" Whitton said.
"I appreciate a good piece of steel," Mark replied.
"Yeah, but this used to be a lot better. Did you ever see it lit up?" When Mark confessed that he hadn't, Whitton sighed. "My Dad took me here for the World Fair. The globe looked fantastic. The real sun was slipping behind the Manhattan skyline, and I watched all the capitals light up, the soft shadows...that had to be like the astronauts looked at the world, you know? Awesome...but small."
"We need to talk about Karen Ayers," Mark said, matter-of-factly. Whitton nodded softly, but said nothing. "Can't we get rid of her somehow?"

Whitton clicked his tongue dismissively.

"What do you wanna hear? That you should go out and kill her?"
"Well..."
"Because that's right out," Whitton said sharply. "I like the agreement as much as the next man, but I'm here to save lives, not to cover my ass."
"I appreciate your idealism, Captain," Mark said. "Really, I do. But the way I see it, something's got to give. I've thought about it, and every other way, somebody important gets thrown to the wolves..."
"And you don't think that Ayers lady is important? You figure everything's gonna be fine if I let you be the wolf?" Whitton replied. "Let's say I forget my personal moral standards and nod off on this, what do you think the DA's office is going to do, huh? Tuck their collective tail between their legs and forget that they have dirt on us? You do that - you just touch her, let alone kill her - they'll go nuclear on us. That doesn't help anybody."

Mark didn't say anything. His train of thought kept running into concrete walls, no matter which track he travelled down.

"Well, you watch yourself, Simmons," Whitton said, finally breaking the silence. "I'm going home."
"Have a good day, Captain," Mark replied.
"You too."

Whitton got up and walked, footsteps crunching the snow and gravel below his shoes. Mark sat there, head cocked to the side, watching Whitton leave. He heard the approach of his second appointment in the distance; another figure on that bench, just three minutes after Whitton had gone.

"Did you get anything?" Karen Ayers asked; there was a click from within the pocket of Mark's coat, and then he handed her a small tape recorder.
"He didn't go for it," Mark said. "I can still get you other dirt on him, but I need more time..."
"Time is what we don't have. What you don't have."
"I just need more time," Mark insisted.
"Simmons, let's not forget one thing here: I'm doing you a favor here. You called me. You want to deal, okay, let's deal, but what are you offering me? You want to give me Alfredo Ingues without the cartel or his daughter, and what good is a case against a dead man?"
"I can't..."
"Yeah, that's a fair assessment, you can't. I come here and this is the way you want to get me Paul Whitton?"
"I will get you Whitton."
"That's good. You for Whitton, that's fair."
"That's not the deal we were talking about."
"That's the deal you're getting. You want to protect that little cartel of yours? That's a juicy, obvious target. You're trying to convince me, Simmons, aren't you? Give me something juicy, something I want."

Hesitation.

"Boris Dolvitch," Mark said through clenched teeth. "I can get you Boris Dolvitch and the rest of the Russian Mafia."
"We're going to get them anyway, once the cops finish sifting through your wreckage at the BAT. You do know that you screwed yourself with that one, don't you?"
"That was a different group of Russians, I can get you evidence to nail Dolvitch and everyone he works with."
"What about you?"
"What about me? Do I look like I need protection? If I go down, then that's how it's going to be."
"Tough words, Simmons."
"I'm more than words, Ayers," Mark said, glaring at her.

Then it was his turn to get up and walk away. With every step there was a sting in his belly, his guts churning and twisting into knots. Whitton he could stomach, though it was a crying shame to feed a good man like that to the grinder. Boris, though...Mark felt sick at the thought, but at the end of the day, Boris was just a friend. Boris wasn't family. And Mark was doing this to save his family, he told himself, nothing too extreme to save the family.

He thought about Sharon.

He'd have to tell her after this, about the choices. She...she'd understand, surely. It's not like Whitton was innocent, nobody was getting framed here; she would have to understand eventually that this was for her sake, too. The inevitable fall of Paul Whitton, without dragging her down. And the family, well, that was a no-brainer. With all the other organizations out of the way, the cartel could lay low, play it legit, watch the heat die down. Mark pictured a nice, long vacation in a non-extraditing country with Sharon, all expenses paid by Senora Ingues. A sacrifice, sure, but that's how the family took care of its own.

It wasn't what Jesus would've done, Mark reflected with a bitter smile. But it would do.

---

Captain Paul Whitton drove home, engine purring and smooth jazz pouring out of the radio like a steady stream of sonic nougat crème. Traffic out of Queens was light, but he drove slowly over the slippery roads, not wanting to chance a loss of control. He was considering things, which meant further loss of pressure on the gas pedal, and he wasn't looking forward to the pot roast for dinner at all.

He turned the radio down and reached into the bag on the passenger's seat. His hand snaked past his badge and issue Glock before grabbing onto a small moleskin notebook; he rested it on the steering wheel, flipped it to Page 7, then grabbed the receiver from his dash-mounted car phone and punched in the number on that page. Red light ahead; Whitton stepped on the brake well in advance, accounting for the lack of traction and bringing the car to a gentle stop. The speaker pressed to his ear reproduced a ring tone, the little representation of potentiality: a call neither taken nor denied.

A click, then a voice. The signal went green. Whitton stepped on the gas.

"Chief, the situation is out of control," the Captain said, not bothering with pleasantries. "We need to move fast on this one."

---

Shuffling through Mark's pad, Sharon walked in fur slippers three sizes too big for her, having rapidly exhausted the entertainment possibilities of the place. The doors to the garage and basement were locked, she wasn't in the mood for reading and there was only so much amusement she could glean from Mark's record collection. Fortunately, she had found a police scanner in a cardboard box of fresh surveillance gear Mark had left in the kitchen; it felt comforting to listen to some chatter with familiar lingo while she assembled the turkey sandwich to end all turkey sandwiches. To that end, she had opened a fresh package of sourdough bread and cut off a few slices with the most unintentionally sinister kitchen knife she'd ever seen; now the task was to pile on turkey cuts, cheese and, well, some slices of ham - for flavor. She watched her creation with distrust, not quite certain of its structural integrity, questioning her decision about having six layers of meat. She grabbed the knife to cut the creation in two, but felt the sandwich slipping at the slightest touch.

A ham too far?

Cussing under her breath, she held down the top slice of bread with her left hand. With the knife sinking in, she could see the sandwich's contents trying to spill out to the sides, but they could not, would not escape her. With a final push, the sandwich laid bare before, cleft in twain with a mail-order ginsu knife. Sharon's triumph was dulled momentarily when she realized that she's forgotten to apply the mustard beforehand and would now have to engage in the culinarily suspicious act of flavoring the halves separately.

One minute later and she'd forgotten all about being hungry.

---

"Dispatch to all units, we have a BOLO on a Mark Simmons, aka Marcus Aaron Simmons, Caucasian male, age 46, about six feet, brown hair, described as muscular, probably wearing long black clothing. He was last seen in the Flushing Meadows Park. Simmons is wanted in connection with last night's killing spree at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. If identified, do not approach, I repeat, do not approach. Suspect is considered armed and dangerous, call dispatch if identified. I repeat, we have a BOLO on a Mark Simmons..."

Two Guns 22 - This is not America

2008-04-04T23:35:00.000+02:00

Brighton Beach, Mark reflected, didn't really look all that festive.

It wasn't snowing so much as mudding, the flakes already dirty on their way to the ground and not improving the situation down there. Mark walked on the boardwalk with a plodding rhythm, both to reflect on the situation and to avoid making a very undignified slip on the ice - the soles of his boots were stiff like boards, affording him little grip on the slippery sidewalk. Normally, that would've been worth noting (and correcting), but being too deep in thought, the sole thought only bubbled up on occasion, to be immediately pushed back down by heavier deliberations. He turned his head to glance behind him, catching a glimpse of the Coney Island amusements in the distance; he sighed, but kept walking. The streets branching off the boardwalk were growing heavier on kyrillic signs and children in heavy parkas waging snowball wars; Mark picked one with little advance warning and crossed the street into Little Odessa.

It seemed that, with every step, he nodded to someone else; street vendors, young toughs hanging out in entrance ways, the occasional businessman. Mark liked the certainty in that, announcing his presence and being acknowledged as guest in turn. Being a good Enforcer was about more than knowing how to handle yourself with a gun. Being a respectable arbiter between the families, knowing how to behave yourself, speaking a smattering of their languages and knowing their customs...all as useful, if not more so, than a fast trigger finger.

Boris's front was an unassuming store for men's clothing; the old bastard was quite the tailor, and Mark recognized a few of the mannequin suits as hanging in his own closet. Mark did it how things worked there; he politely declined the first offer of help from the employee, looked around for a couple of minutes, then informed the sales clerk that he'd like to have a custom suit tailored. This led to the sales clerk excusing himself for a minute to formally announce Mark's presence to Boris; then he came back and told Mark to step into the back to talk to the boss about what exactly he had in mind. Mark thanked the clerk, then parted the curtains and stepped into the back. One of Boris's bodyguards asked him to remove his coat, for measuring; Mark had always felt like this was a pretty good idea on how to frisk people while staying in character, so to speak. With a nod from the guardian, it was time to hit the office. Another guard stood at the door, nodded to Mark and opened it for him; Mark stepped into a slice of 70s Americana. He always admired the crampedness of the room, all the photos and half-tailored suits and paintings surrounding Boris's desk. The old man was sitting there, skinny glasses riding the bridge of his nose and his right hand on a mug of deep black coffee.

"Hello, Boris," Mark began; the old man indicated a chair in front of the desk, and Mark sat down.
"Welcome once again, Mark. What can I do for you today?"
"Oh, I figured I'd just check in," Mark said nonchalantly. "See how you're doing."
"I'm recovering quite nicely, thank you." Boris held up his hand; the index finger didn't flex when he moved the others. Mark understood what that meant, but gave no further comment. "How are you?" Boris asked.
"Ah, you know me. I'm bulletproof."
Boris chuckled softly. "That's what we all are. Then we get old."
"I'm glad you're okay," Mark said.
"I was a little worried when they set the trailer on fire," Boris said, sipping from his coffee. "And being clinically dead twice in one week...yes, that's a little more excitement than I usually wish for. Would you care for some coffee?"
"Thank you, but..."

Boris fetched a second cup and saucer from a cupboard behind him, then poured coffee for Mark. In the great continuum of coffee from sludge to dishwater, this definitely fell closer to the former. Mark took a sip and impressed Boris by managing to keep a straight face.

"I need to know what happened to Berkovitz," Mark said.
"I have a question for you, first," Boris said thoughtfully. "When the Soviet Union finally decided to let people emigrate...who do you think they let go first?"
"Okay, I'll bite. They kicked out the gangsters in the 60s, right?"
"Early 70s. But yes. People like me. People they didn't want. Berkovitz's parents were Orthodox Jews, hardliners. His father didn't make it past the border, his mother drank herself to death over it. So that little boy grows up here, and his heart is hardened against Russia."
"Oh, I know another complainer..."
"True Russians complain," Boris added. "I defended the Motherland against Hitler's stooges. He hated it, and that's why he's an emigrant. I am merely in exile..."
"Right. Berkovitz?"
"The little boy who hates Russia grows up to be a police officer. He speaks Russian, they put him into Organized Crime. He goes crooked. We come to an arrangement."
"You never mentioned that part before," Mark said.
"Mark, we're friends, not business partners," Boris shot back without the slightest hint of malice. "He was just another piece of small fry until he made his play to kidnap me from Nikolai and kill me. I have to admit, he was pretty good, but he wasn't a professional. And he bored me with his life story...as if I didn't already know it."
"You're fairly relaxed about all the shit they did to you."
"Why get agitated?" Boris says, sipping on his coffee. "With the precision of clockwork, life repays our evil. Berkovitz is dead, you killed Nikolai."
"Are you sure Berkovitz is dead?" Mark asked.
"I saw him sink into the water next to me with a bullet hole in his head, before Nikolai pulled me out again. That would be difficult to fake."

Mark leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh.

"At least one loose end tied up," he said.
"Make that two," Boris said; Mark looked up to find the Russian pulling the cork from a bottle of wine. "I owe you this much, at least."
"Only one glass," Mark said defensively while Boris poured. "I've got some things to do today."
"Good things?"
"...no."
"Then enjoy the wine," Boris replied.

Mark rose from his chair, grabbed the glass and raised it to a toast.

"To old friendships," Boris said.
"To old friendships," Mark replied with a slight smile.

---

Mark's footsteps were quiet against the gravel that made up the walkway between the plots of the small Brooklyn cemetery; new shoes, a new black suit, all fresh off the shelves at Boris's shop. After that, a visit to the barbershop nearby, haircut and a shave that still tingled on his cheeks. Mark wanted to look respectable for this.

The cemetery was nearly empty, owing to the cold, which suited the assassin just fine; he slowed his walk as he approached a granite cross, a grave he knew without having seen it before. Alfredo Ingues, the inscription read. 1912 - 1989. Beloved father. Mark looked around, eyes darting from side to side. He twitched in his new jacket against the wind, tried to gather up the right words for an audience of infinite patience.

"I'm sorry," he began, unsure of every syllable. "I'm sorry, Alfredo. There, I said it." He laughed uneasily. "You kept nagging me and I always went for Sir. Well, it's Alfredo now, old man! How do you like them apples?"

Silence.

"I wanted to apologize, I guess I've done that now. Yeah, you know, for not being there...at the funeral. I should've been there. I should've been there and I wasn't. I'm, like I said, I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. Heh, you're probably smiling now. Stupid old Mark, all torn up over another body."

Silence.

"But that's just it, isn't it? You're not just another body rotting away. You are...you were the boss. You've been part of my life for so long...so long. And I'm all torn up because I wanted to be there for you, the way you were always there for me. That's part of why I'm here now, you know how I am. I don't like leaving my debts unpaid. And I owe you this, Alfredo. I owe you the respect to come here and honor you. I don't...I didn't talk to Alex about this, but I figured you wouldn't have wanted this to be a big old group hug kind of thing. So..."

Silence.

"So I also want to thank you. For being there. For taking an angry teenager off the streets. For all the things you gave me and taught me. I know it was just business, it's hard to go for the heartwarming stuff when I was your tool for so long. But I believe that, in the end, I was more than a weapon for you. And you're dead and can't tell me I'm full of shit, so that's how I'll remember it."

Silence.

"I'm just that kind of guy, you know...yes, you know. My bad. I take care of things. And the last thing you ordered me to do, to protect Sharon Collins...I've done that. You would've liked her, if you'd seen her...not just the frightened cop that evening. The woman she is. The warrior she is. The way she walks and doesn't know how crazy it makes me. The way she doesn't back down. The way she just...she just loves me. And the way I love her."

Silence.

"And that's what makes this so damn hard."

Silence.

"You don't see it? Well, let me spell it out for you, Alfredo. She's going to take down the family. I know that. So you see, this is all your fault."

Silence.

"We believed in it, didn't we? You had me convinced, all those years, that we're gangsters with good hearts. That there's honor among thieves. But now I look at it and it's just about survival. Where's the honor now, Alfredo? Is it in the things we do or the things we say?"

Silence.

"You're laughing now, you old bastard, aren't you?" Mark said, the first hint of a tear in his left eye. "Silly old Mark. Getting so worked up over nothing. Why don't you tell me how to puzzle this out, Alfredo? Why don't you just say, 'Mark, there's things a man has to do'?"

Silence.

"Because I know that!" Mark said, anger creeping into his voice. "I know that! But this isn't that easy!"

Silence.

Silence.

"No. I'm being unfair. I know what you'd say."

Silence. Mark sighed and wiped some tears from his cheeks.

"You're talking to two people here, you know that, Alfredo, don't you? Only one is going to leave this place. For every one who wins...somebody loses."

Silence.

Mark breathed out with all his might, the way one might to drive poison from the lungs. His muscles tensed, his face hardened, and he turned away from the grave, purpose in the beat of his steps. No more cold, no more confessions. One Mark left behind at the grave, mourning his losses. Another Mark walking away to do what he lived to do.

---

When he passed the gates of the cemetery, he reached into the pocket of his pants and grabbed the keys to his car. With efficient movements, he unlocked the door, sat down in the driver's seat and started the engine. With a bit more force than necessary, he accelerated out of the parking lot, back into the city. His cell phone rang, right on cue.

"Simmons."
"It's me," Sharon's voice came from the other end. "I'm at the station right now."
"Why are you..."
"Listen, this is important. Ayers sent me a little file the DEA built on Silvestro. One of the photos shows him entering the general hospital in Bogota...and I'll bet you dollars to pesos that he went to see Alex there."
"I'll ask her about it, I'm heading her way now."
"Ask her? Mark, this proves that there's something going on here."
"No, it proves that he was at the hospital. It's not much use as evidence for anything else."
"If you'd just ask her the right questions..."
"Don't worry about that," Mark said, his voice flat. "I have a plan."

Two Guns 21 - Hunting High And Low

2008-03-23T07:33:00.000+01:00

A stray beam of sunlight coaxed Sharon's eyes open. It would have been poignant to say that she woke up with a shock, amazed at the unfamiliar surroundings, but her rise was slow and methodical, as though her consciousness needed a few minutes for pre-flight checklists and spooling up. She was in a well-furnished bedroom, the walls mostly covered by bookshelves. The little beam of light that had woken in came from the room's only door, lazily left half-open. As she righted herself, she felt the consequences of a caffeine crash thump against her skull. Yesterday's underwear was sweaty and had left uncomfortable strips of reddened skin on her, while the rest of her clothes formed a rough pile next to the bed. With deliberate moves, she cast aside the heavy comforter and turned to get up, the mattress's springs aching under the shifting weight. Her naked foot touched the hard ground, and she almost recoiled at the unfamiliar semi-cold of unheated solid parquet.

Time to get up.

Tiptoeing both for silence and to establish a more favorable heat transfer (or rather, lack thereof) with the floor, she snuck towards a nearby bookshelf, as if looking at them would answer her questions. She found a row of technical manuals for firearms of various stripes; their organization was roughly alphabetical, if haphazard in places. As if to counterbalance such cold facts, a collection of crime pulp novels stretched below, some of them worn down to the raw spine and pages with no cover left.

She filed all that away for later consideration, but first things first: You can't case a house when you need to pee.

The bathroom was right next door, the standard issue nightmare of white tiles, sink + mirror to one side and a shower cabin on the other. A towel holder hung from the far wall, while a metal basket filled with shampoo bottles hung from the top edge of the shower cabin. Without looking, she closed the door behind her and locked it, then removed her remaining clothes and stepped into the cabin.

---

Sharon was in the middle of a very long and comfortably hot shower when she heard the front door being unlocked; she could recognize Mark's footsteps by their heavy rhythm, a stomping beat as if he was compensating for all those places where he had to be seen but not heard. She rinsed some foam from her hair - for a macho guy with short hair, Mark sure had a lot of conditioner in his bathroom.

"Shar?" he called, and she heard the door snap closed behind him, then more footsteps. "Enjoying the shower?"
"Did you undress me?"
"Etiquette failed me." Thumping, a fridge being opened. "Dear Miss Manners," he began with a mocking inflection, "my girlfriend fell asleep before she could make it to the bed. Is it okay if I take off her clothes, and if so, to what degree? What if she doesn't like sleeping in her undies but objects to being naked? Can I dress her in a nightie? Do I get to choose which? If she wakes back up, how do I explain myself? And why are sleeping girlfriends so unbearably hot?"
"Thanks for the conversation, Lil' Marcus. Can I talk with Mark now?"
"You wound me, M'lady," he said, slamming the fridge door closed.
"That was Berkovitz's shield, by the way."
"What?"

Sharon rinsed the last of the conditioner from her 'do, then turned off the shower, pushed the curtain aside and grabbed two towels on her way out. The big one she wrapped around herself, the small one around her hair.

"I said, that was Berkovitz's shield."
"In that case, I can definitely say that he wasn't there. Not with the Russians, not otherwise, he wasn't there."
"That's good."
"Yeah, I'd feel really bad if I had killed a cop."
"That's good, too. I called Whitton, he said Berk was undercover. Doesn't really shed any light onto the issue, does it."
"Look, all I know is that one of the Russkies had his badge."
"So they killed him."
"Probably. They're fucking crazy and they don't care."

Sharon rubbed the small towel through her damp hair as her eyes darted about for a blow dryer. No joy; her theory about Mark's mane-related vanity felt slightly shakier.

"But why?" she asked.
"I mentioned the 'crazy' part, right? I'm meeting Boris later today, I'm going to ask him."
"Do you have a spare toothbrush?"
"You can use mine."

Sharon snatched the toothbrush from the glass it was in, filled said glass with half water, half mouthwash and swished it for a good couple of seconds before spitting the result back into the sink. She regarded the toothbrush for a second, then put it back into the glass and set it down on the sink.

Time to play dress up.

---

Unsuitably dressed - what is it with guys and band t-shirts, and why, oh why, did it have to be Journey? -, Sharon limped into the living room. The pair of jeans from Mark was quite a bit too long for her, to say nothing of their tendency to ride down her hips despite using the last hole in the belt. Since everything in nature must have an opposite, the pair of boxer shorts was headed upwards instead. (Small mercy: Sharon had no idea that people were doing this intentionally on the Left Coast. The thought might have shattered her remaining faith in humanity.) Finally, there was the matter of footwear, but she walked al natural - Mark's stockpile of socks (A sockpile?) would never wrap its filthy mojo around her toes, no Sir.

The living room had the windows both bedroom and bathroom lacked, though most of them were shuttered half-closed at the moment. The parquet just stopped a few feet from the fireplace, where the ground abruptly transitioned to stone tiles. In another corner stood a small armchair with a plastic folding table in front of it, opposite a TV with a mess of wires leading down to a brickish VCR. The bookcase theme continued, though those were filled with videocassettes - more than Sharon had ever seen in one place outside a rental shop. In another corner stood a stereo system, topped with a record player and a case of LPs.

Must be nice to have disposable income.

"The guns are in the basement, in case you're wondering," Mark said with a smirk.
"Let me guess: this is not your house."
"Technically, it belongs to a guy named Winston Cooper. Large fella. Looks a lot like me."
"A lot, huh?"
"We could be fuckin' twins. What matters is that Winston paid cash, has all his taxes in order and doesn't do anything the Homeowners' Association frowns upon. Bulletproof ID, social security, all the stops."
"Crime pays, huh?"

Mark smiled, with just a tinge of guilt on his lips. With a few tentative steps, she approached the stereo, her eyes locked on the prize.

"Uh, you can just put some music on," Mark said. "Are you hungry?"

She knelt down next to the LP case and browsed his collection. Stupidly obvious, for the most part, except for...

"You said you can waltz, right?" she said.
"Used to, yeah."
"Slow waltz or Viennese?"
"Slow...I guess."
"Perfect. Do you feel like dancing?"

Before he had a chance to respond, she had the record on the table and the needle on the vinyl. As the music started playing, she turned to look at him.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I could go for that."

---

Journey shirt on the floor.

Spent as much time picking it out as she spent wearing it.

Totally worth it.

---

Mark's fingers hooked into Sharon's reddish hair, slowly rifling through it while she turned her head and snuggled up closer to his chest. They hadn't gotten past the cuddling stage, and Mark desperately wanted that to be okay when his endocrine system put every effort into calling for escalation.

"Am I teasing you again?" she asked playfully.
"God, yes."
"You know..." she began, then thought better of it.
"What?"

After a few precious seconds, she answered.

"Not to kill the mood, but I actually have a serious question."
"Of course you do."
"If you had to leave me...would you do it?"

At least that took care of his erection.

"Have to leave you?"
"You have responsibilities."
"Sure, but..." Mark said, trying and failing to stop this train of thought.
"And as soon as I become a danger to the cartel..."
"Don't talk like that, Shar."
"No matter what I do..." she began to say, but he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and drew her in closer.
"You're not alone, Shar," he said, a tangle of emotions stuck in his throat and bubbling out in a random cadence. "You're not alone."

He drew her closer still, feeling her heartbeat mix with his. Felt her I become a We. Felt what could be, felt what couldn't be.

And he thought about the things he had to do.

Two Guns 20 - I Fought The Law

2008-03-09T01:40:00.001+01:00

Sharon's hands rested on the sides of a sink, her head hung low, and the faucet cheerfully splashed water against porcelain, all without her moving. It seemed like she'd sucked out all dynamism from the room; even the overhead light refused to flicker. Through raw will, she summoned the energy to turn the faucet off. She slowly lifted her head and chanced a look at the mirror.

So much for "pretty when you cry". She was a mess.

With plodding steps, she left the restroom, headed for the elevator and pressed the "Lobby" button. On the way down, she rested her forehead against the cool metal of the side panels, as if the touch of technology could suck the fever out of her brain. The elevator car came to a soft stop, the doors opened, and Sharon wouldn't budge. She stayed like this for a minute, trying to calm the storm in her, but finally she gave up, blindly hammered the "Open Door" button and stepped out.

"A moment of your time, Detective..." came a female voice from the side. Sharon didn't have to look to know it was the woman that had left all those calls, obviously none the less motivated for it. Assistant District Attorney Karen Ayers...small, brown hair framing a gaunt face. 28 and already old.
"Do you have a subpoena?" Sharon asked, exhaustion dripping from her words.
"I'm working on it..."

Sharon weighed the legal consequences of punching Ayers versus the amount of satisfaction she'd get out of it and came up short.

"Then there's not a damn thing you're getting from me. 'ta."
"Detective, as part of an official investigation, you will..."
"What?" Sharon asked, stopping her tracks. She turned to face Ayers, who slowly comprehended the magnitude of her misstep. "Official investigation my ass, Ayers. Show me some court orders."
"As I said, I'm in the process of getting them signed off. But it's in your best interest to start cooperating."
"Oh, in the process. So, when can I expect your mythical 'case'?" Sharon said, every breath a step towards Ayers. "When the Yankees make it to the Playoffs? 'cause I gotta tell you, they're not looking good this decade."

Ayers shrunk back from her, almost backing herself into a corner, but when Sharon stopped advancing, she met her stare.

"There's a difference between what I can prove in court and what I know," Ayers said, ratcheting up her own attitude to strike back. "For example, I know that you're dating anIngues hitman. And I can prove in court that Captain Whitton is involved in a criminal conspiracy."
"Oh, that's gonna be a great coup for truth and justice. You want to take down the only decent cop in the whole mess."
"Decent people don't break the law, Detective."
"Yet you're standing here, blackmailing me. Guess the law isn't so great, after all."
"I need results."
"So does Whitton."

Ayers bit her lip.

"I don't exist to fuck with you. Whatever you or Whitton have done in the service of keeping this city safe can be...overlooked. But the situation is out of control, that means people call me, and that means I'm treading on you. Results, Detective. If you don't help me, the only other thing I can do is bring you down - I can't have you running around as a free agent making more trouble."
"I'm sure your superiors would love to hear about your methods."
"Go ahead. You touch me, I go public, we both go down, plus Whitton. The whole thing will blow wide open, and the rest of the office will be all over the rubble."
"..."
"So, I get what I want. How do you get what you want, Detective? What do you want?"

For a second, it looked like Sharon would simply rip out Ayers's throat, but after some deliberation, the beast in her quieted down.

"I want your guarantee that you're not going after Captain Whitton or Mark Simmons."
"Simmons, hm? Is that his name?"
"Can you guarantee that?"
"Can you get me Alexandra Ingues?"

Sharon didn't say another word, but nodded slowly.

"I want evidence that she's involved in organized crime," Ayers said, "whatever you can dig up. I don't care about the cartel rabble, I need her."
"And what do I get?"
"There will be ripples in the water, but I can stall things long enough for Simmons to skip town - and I can lose files if the FBI knocks on my door. If you can getWhitton to step down - health issues or what have you -, then you'd save me the trouble of dealing with him."
"That's not a good deal."
"It's the best deal you're getting. So, what's it going to be?"

---

With heavy steps, Sharon walked through the hallway of her apartment building, fishing for the keys in her jacket. The night outside was getting lighter, it seemed, a blanket slowly withdrawing from the city. The sun wouldn't rise for another hour, no, but the night was retreating.

She found Mark inside the apartment, resting on the couch and watching TV - explosions and aerial combat, at an hour where she would be asleep if things were normal. The back of her mind nagged her about giving the neighbours something unusual to come and investigate, but what she really wanted was a coffee and a hug.

Mark gladly obliged her on both counts.

"What are they doing tonight?" she asked, turning her head and resting it on his shoulder to watch the action on screen.
"Oh, I think they're saving a village in South America."
"Do you think they'll win?"
"Sure. Are you hungry?"
"No, I'm tired."
"Let's go then."

He released her, a bit too abruptly, then went over the switch off the TV just as the theme music started to blare. Sharon stayed in place, tracing his movement with her eyes.

"They'll send someone after us," she said. Mark looked up from his duffel bag. "I mean, there'll be more assassins, right?" she continued.
"I'm not worried about the Russians at this point," Mark replied matter-of-factly. "But we should still move. Wait a couple of days at a safe house, see if this blows over."
"You made a lot of noise."
"That's why we're going to be extra quiet. Come on," he said.

One amusing part of the human condition is layered self-reflection. Sharon observed that, given the amount of emotional dislocation she'd been through, it might have been a logical reaction for her to try to grab some clothes and comfort items. It was a silly little thing to do, and she didn't feel that need at all. On some level, she wanted to feel the need, but on another, more primitive stage, she had already recognized that her old life was done and over with.

She hadn't even fought for it.

She followed Mark in a haze, her faculties less concerned with thinking the situation through but immensely curious about why she felt that way. The raw violence of her entry into this world, her trust in Mark, maybe she'd never been attached to her life at all - all of those seemed plausible at first glance. But how do you tell if you're thinking clearly?

How do you know when you're crazy? Isn't the ability to do that part of not being crazy in the first place?

She took the passenger's seat in Mark's Oldsmobile with the routine of a factory worker, leaned back and closed her eyes. The hard rock soundtrack of her life blared out its final notes, another virtuoso performance finished, another night done. Released from all her duties, she found some rest while the soft thump of the suspension rocked her to sleep.

Two Guns 19 - Hammer To Fall

2008-02-26T03:41:00.000+01:00

There was no perception of time in Dollar's underground clinic, but Sharon just sipped on her coffee and felt the mucous membranes of her mouth suck up the caffeine; it was the only thing that kept her going through the wee hours of the morning. The shivering was getting worse. She drew the blanket over her shoulders closer, trying to trap the warmth. She could've asked Dollar to turn up the heat - but that would've involved talking to Dollar. She freed a pack of smokes from her jacket, flipped a cigarette into her mouth and dug back into her clothes in search of a lighter.

"Hey, wuzzat?" Dollar hollered from across the room. He was there much faster than it should be possible to move and snatched the cigarette from her mouth.
"Do you mind?" she said, angry from being tired and tired of being angry.
"Girl, you's all wired and shit. You don't wanna light up that cancer stick, that'll kick you to hyperspace. You gotta smoke somethin', I'ma hook you up with some fine cheeba so you don't start trippin'."
"I'm fine. Can I have my cigarette back now?"
"That ain't right..."
"You're already down two beatings for the evening; wanna go for a hat trick?"

Dollar dropped the cigarette onto the floor and ground it under his shoe. Sharon met his glare, then calmly fetched another smoke from her pack and lit it.

"That's it. Move over, bitch. You wanna smoke, we's gon' smoke together."

Sharon gave him a strange look but moved over almost by reflex. Dollar sat down next to her on the couch, grabbed a joint from his shirt pocket and fired away. Within seconds, an intense smell pushed the tobacco smoke away, and a sweetness formed in Sharon's nostrils as if they'd been sugar-coated.

"Now this is some bangin' reefer, lady, not the dirt they sling to the preppies. Purple haze, baby."
"You ever try to quit?" Sharon asked.
"Nah, girl, this is what keeps me going."
"I've been quitting for two years now. Gums, patches, whatever, it doesn't work."
"I got a rehab cage in the basement, you know," Dollar threw in.
"...what?"
Dollar laughed. "Girl, how do you think I met Kyla? Little crackhead snooping around for things to fly with, I knocked her on her ass and then we did the cold turkey therapy."
"How long did it take?"
"Shit...three weeks like."
"And you had a cage in your basement - why?"

Dollar took a deep draw from his blunt and cackled.

"Well, I don't get to fuck assassins. Gotta get my kicks somewhere."
"I have to stop asking these questions."
"Don't get it twisted: I never got biblical on my lil' girl. I don't go for spun up jailbait. Rehab ain't sexy, I'll tell ya that for free."
"If I say I believe you, can we talk about something else?"
"Ah, white chick mode: first you squeeze me for details and then you raise your purity shields. Whateva, girl, that's cool with me. You ever get the itch, you know where to find me."

Sharon had to concede that this was one of the most effective arguments for abstinence she had ever heard.

When Kyla entered the room seconds later, Sharon involuntarily had to imagine what she had looked like as an addict. The image wasn't pretty; Kyla didn't seem the type to lose weight gracefully, and Sharon could picture her as a teenage skeleton, rummaging for something worth stealing from the medicine cabinets on the walls.

"Your squeeze on line two," Kyla said, reeling Sharon back into reality. She acknowledged the sentence with a curt nod, got up from the couch and took an extra drag off the almost-finished cigarette as she followed Kyla around a few corners. A wall-mounted telephone (the kind that should probably be in a booth) had its receiver lying on top, with the steel links of its heavy-duty cord still softly clanging against the phone's body. She picked the receiver from its resting place and forced it against the side of her head.

"Mark?"
"...Sharon? Hey. Listen, I..."
"How did it go?"
"Are you watching TV?"
"No. Why?"
"Uh...we're in a bit of a mess right now. Things got loud. But we've got Boris, and Nikolai is history."
"Where are you now?"
"Payphone. Listen, I need some help."
"Tell me where you are and I'll be there."
"No, no, not that kind of help. I've got this Detective's shield, and..."
"What?"
"One of the Russians had a badge with him."
"..."
"I've got the number here. 4-7-4-4. I need that run ASAP."
"...you killed an undercover cop?"
"No! No, I'm pretty sure I..."
"You're pretty sure."
"Look, if you just run the number, okay? Go to the precinct and run it. I'm not immune to fuckups, but I think there's something going on here."
"And if it comes up as undercover?"
"That would be...bad."
"No shit."
"I'm going to drop off Boris at the next emergency room, he obviously doesn't want to go back to Dollar...and then I'll come and drive you to the precinct."
"No, no..." Sharon said, brushing some hair away from her ear while she tried to think clearly. "I'll head over to the precinct myself. Not a good idea for you to show yourself there now. Wait at my apartment."
"You got it."

And then he hung up. Perfect.

---

By the time Sharon reached the precinct - via Kyla's moped, no less -, she was well and truly beat, tired beyond all recognition and with the fondest wish for only her own bed to sleep in. Almost on autopilot, she fed some cash to the coffee dispenser, waited the requisite 15 seconds and grabbed a plastic cup with barely liquid caffeine in it. A sip of that brought her back from the brink, and the elevator ride to the third floor gave her five more sips. By the time she walked into her office, she was almost awake.

4744.

She ran it and it didn't take long enough for suspense to build, it just told her that this was Berkovitz's badge.

She tried his home number, but nobody picked up. Her brain wanted to give in right there and then, sort this out tomorrow, but her fingers were already punching Captain Whitton's number into the telephone pad. It rang a couple of times and she realized that this wasn't the right time of night to be calling anyone, but Whitton picked up before she hung up.

"Whitton."
"Captain, I'm sorry to disturb you, but..."
"Collins? What's the situation?"
"I need to find Berkovitz. I think he knows something about the ambush at the restaurant."
"Yeah...that's not gonna happen. He's on assignment."

Fuck.

"Oh. Sorry to wake you, then..."
"Actually, I've been following the coverage."
"The coverage?"
"Didn't you hear? There was a firefight in Brooklyn. They just about levelled the old Army Terminal, and if we can trust the investigative prowess of the Channel 7 graveyard shift, there's a ton of dead Russians."
"..."
"How's your boyfriend, Sharon?"
"I have to go now."

Sharon slammed the receiver onto the phone, switched the computer off and hurried outside. Her gait was unsteady, her feet more searching than finding, and she felt the typhoon in her guts as soon as she barely glimpsed the sign at the women's restroom. With one palm on the frame and a swift kick, she entered, blundered into the next stall and sank to her knees. Tears streamed down her face while she grappled her hair, forced it behind her head and bowed down over the toilet bowl.

Nothing.

One hand on the seat, the other still holding her long red hair, Sharon knelt over the porcelain and breathed heavily, her eyes almost sewed shut as more tears streamed down her cheeks. The sickness clung to her throat; all that came were acidic belches and gagging. She hovered for a minute, her mind blank, and then she rose up again, slowly walked over to the sinks and opened a faucet. Her hands splashed cold water onto her face, then she help them under the stream and collected some water in her cupped hands. Small, measured sips.

That thought again. Sharon Collins, your boyfriend kills people for a living. How do you feel about that?

Two Guns 18 - The Trooper

2008-02-13T06:24:00.001+01:00

Riding in the back of an otherwise nondescript gray panel van, Done and Mark stocked up on the best the Ingues arsenal had to offer; Done finessed another 40mm grenade into his bandoleer to complement the M16A2/M203 combo on the bench next to him, while Mark indulged in the finger-callusing sport of loading a few Calico 50-round magazines.

"So, why Paladin?" Done asked out of the blue.
"You would've understood if you'd met the old boss," Mark said, fishing for a new bag of 9mm cartridges. "He's the guy who set up the great compromise. Very much into history, liked to think he was Charlemagne..."
"Right."
"Now, he suggested Roland, but Roland's too easy to confuse with a real name, so I figured, hey, what did he do?"
"Kill Muslims? Die horribly?"
"In a more general sense. He was a - wait for it - Paladin."
"I actually like it less now that I know where it comes from."
"That's the mark of all great nicknames," Mark said with a grin.

And then there was a crash and metal against metal and BANG and up was down as the van tumbled off the street, rolling onto the parking space of the all-but-abandoned Brooklyn Army Terminal. The rear doors opened rather violently when Done impacted them, throwing him clear off the van and onto the asphalt. He laid there for a few seconds, unmoving, listening to the noise of a heavy-duty diesel engine rapidly closing in. Done rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding the off-road tires of a rather large forklift. With no more time to lose, he got up and ran for it. He was shedding loose cartridges in a rather molting-esque visual, but that was secondary - he managed to reach the concealment of a parked car just as the fork stabbed into the rear compartment of the van.

Before Done could right himself and load a grenade, the forklift raised its arm and drove off with the van still hanging off it, towards a rather large collection of railroad tracks and abandoned train cars to the South. Whatever duty Done felt to get Mark and Vince out of this pickle took a back seat to the large cloud of shot that banged against the car panel he was sitting next to - and even considering the generally low penetration powers of 12 gauge 00, that kind of last-minute stop was as lucky as things got. With a snap, he closed the launcher on the 40mm shell and dropped to the ground, spotting the wheels of a car approaching his position. With a grunt and a few more rolls, he cozied up to the car, waiting for his attackers to come by and check their supposed kill - but when they circled around the lot to find him and he got them into his sights, all they received for their troubles was a cracked windshield from the impact of the HE shell. Muttering incoherent curses at the inventor of the whole "minimum arming distance" feature, Done simply snapped the rifle's safety off and let them have a good portion of the magazine. When he was finished, the security deposit on that rental car was seriously forfeited.

In other words, holes and not just a few of them.

Mark wasn't having much of a good time either, because he was still somewhat caught in the existential crisis of nearly getting his skull crushed by a big fat piece of sharpened metal going through the side of the van. It took a couple of seconds to recover from that one, but when he did, he grabbed the Calico and scrambled to reach the back door. It didn't work, and then it continued to not work, until Mark realized that the fork had not missed his trenchcoat. With the kind of grace that only comes from years of practice and a deep-seated fear of God's judgment, Mark slipped out of the coat and out of the van, diving into the dirt a couple feet below and rolling with the landing while the forklift driver slammed on his brakes, sliding the precariously-balanced van off the forks. Mark abused that little moment for all it was worth; jumping up and breaking into a dead run for the heavy vehicle, he managed to jump onto the back just as the driver tried to reverse and applied his own brand of reversing to the situation by yanking the Russian from the cockpit and taking control of the construction equipment. The Russian landed rather worse than Mark, twisting his ankle, and arguably that's what killed him - arguably because what actually killed him was Mark running him over. But, you know, that damn ankle. Maybe he could've gotten away without that injury, and then he wouldn't have been turned into communist road kill.

In the land of the not-hypothetical, however, Mark came under fire, and no matter what the A-Team may have told us, construction equipment is not bullet-proof.

As quickly as he'd gained control of it, Mark left the forklift, running back to the Administration building to the North. Shots followed him, and to add insult to injury another Russian climbed onto the forklift and set off after Mark. It became painfully clear that Mr. "Ain’t never seen a foot point that angle" wouldn't have made it in any event, for the forklift was doing a rather good job of closing the distance to Mark sprinting for his life.

Then there was the whistling and the BOOM! and a little 2 second sun over the dirt while Mark went flying with the most intense pain in his ears (despite the earplugs), and finally the dust settled and the forklift was fuckin' toast. A couple hundred yards away, Done smiled and popped the grenade launcher open. Mark scrambled to his feet and limped away, clearly worse for wear but too rattled to realize that for at least a couple of seconds more. His ears were ringing, he was going the other way and there was a flaming wreck in the way, so Mark couldn't notice Vince come to and kick the van's driver's door open. The Russians staging from the train tracks had other problems now, chiefly Done bringing the hurt from a full bandoleer of 40mm HE grenades and a quite accurate leaf sight, so Vince had the breathing room to grab his rifle bag from the passenger seat and run for it.

Mark reached a depression in the sand and half-dove, half-fell down into the ditch. The ringing in his ears was fading way too slowly, but even so he could hear the shouts of Russians trying to push north and take out Done's artillery support. With fevered motions, Mark unclipped the Calico's magazine and shook the dirt out, then snapped it back into place, turned around and raked the advancing line of Russians with an unhealthily long burst of 9mm strafing.

In the Calico's defense, it only jammed when it was already halfway through the magazine and had killed five Russians. The rest failed to reconsider their charging ways, figuring that they'd have more luck clubbing Mark with their Kalashnikov stocks rather than trying to shoot him. Mark dropped the Calico into the dirt like a hot potato and freed a combat knife from the sheath in the small of his back; he blocked the first Russian's thrust with the spring-loaded Hi-Power on his left lower arm, then rammed the knife into the attacker's midsection and pulled it out - the long way. Without bothering to check for life from his first hit, Mark picked up momentum, body checking several attackers as if he was trying to breach a defensive line for a touchdown.

Then again, most football leagues have regulations against doing that with a piece of sharpened carbon steel in your hand.

Without the distraction of people shooting at him, Vincent made it to the administration building and kicked in the front door; the padlock hanging off it held, but the door it was attached to didn't, so he gained access. On his way to the stairs, he hastily opened the bag and grabbed his Dragunov, which was good because the Russians had anticipated that kind of play and had a guard inside. Vince flipped the rifle's safety and fired it from the hip, punching a big hole through the guy's shoulder, then he followed that up by rifle-butting the man into bloody submission. Moments like this reaffirmed Vincent's love affair with Soviet infantry weaponry - so maybe the French rifles were more precise, but what good is a rifle you have to rezero after bashing a couple of heads in? Vince lined up a proper shot to the guy's neck - at CQB distance, aiming through a scope that lets you see the pores of your target's skin is fun, even if it's horribly impractical. With a bang, the man stopped twitching, and Vince hurried up the stairs for higher ground.

By the time the Russians realized that maybe they should stop charging and start attacking Mark, he'd killed three of them and left two with only fond memories of their kidneys; in the great free-for-all of the pseudo-foxhole, Mark took a stock to the arm, which was infinitely better than taking one to the head, and dropped to the ground, kicking the attacker in the family jewels. Flipping the bloodied knife around, he flung it into the leg of the next contestant, grabbed one of the discarded AKs, narrowly dodged a butt plate coming for his face and shoved Uncle Mike's muzzle against the Russian's chest before pulling the trigger.

Two things to consider here: A) An AK-47 is not accurate or controllable when fired one-handed, B) at this range, it doesn't matter.

After twenty-two bloody messes (all collected into one meta-mess that would make even the most battle-hardened CSI guys ask for a raise), the Russian dropped, literally shoved over by the wall of lead. Mark dropped the AK and picked up the re-dirted Calico, then started for the line of train cars. If the Russians were all cooped up there...well, then maybe they kept Ded in one of those.

The interior of the administration building was cramped and tight, the atrium more like a prison with the scattered lights and steel mesh everywhere. Assault-slung Dragunov in one hand, CZ 85 in the other, Vince cowered behind a waist-high heavy concrete wall while withering Kalashnikov fire chipped away at the wall behind him. The Russians were quite good, alternating their fire so he couldn't catch them reloading, but he had the better cover; sticking the pistol out a bit, he blindfired, forcing the attackers to scramble. He rose with the fire, dialing in his shots, and actually managed to gun down half of the Russian defender duo with his third-to-last bullet. One more shot at the other Russian to keep him in check, then Vince dropped back down, let the magazine drop out and fed a fresh one. That gave him 17 shots total, but he figured the remaining guard would be watching for him to try the blindfire trick again - so the CZ went back to the holster. Dropping his fancy suit into the dust, he crawled while bullets whizzed overhead; when he reached the end of the covering wall, he brought up the Dragunov and switched magazines.

Out: 7N1 (precision load). In: B-32 (Armor-Piercing, Incendiary).

One might find the precise difference between 7.62x39 and 7.62x54R calibers somewhat academic if encountered in the context of, say, an evening's conversation over green tea - who cares what the Soviets used to kill Mujahidin freedom fighters? If, however, the relative muzzle energy and penetrative properties of the two calibers were suddenly the linchpin of one's survival, the issue might receive more attention. In any event, the Kalashnikov's lighter caliber didn't really manage to get through the concrete in front of Vincent's body, and the Russian wasn't a good enough shot to hit the part with the rifle that stuck out. In contrast, Vince aimed his shot carefully and sprayed his opponent with a loud cloud of reinforced concrete ejecta, and at that stage it didn't really matter if it was the debris or the bullet hitting the guy. It didn't kill him, but it forced him to stumble back and right himself (including trying to shake off burst eardrums), a process that involved showing his head.

Vincent's next shot was utterly predictable. The carnage it produced strained against the upper bounds of the "closed casket funeral" definition.

According to standard military science, Mark shouldn't have reached the line of train cars; a single attacker against a fixed line of fortifications was to be laughed at briefly, pitied even briefly-er and then pumped full of bullets at the earliest convenience. Without a way to determine the general emotional state of the Russian defenders, Mark nevertheless noted with some bewilderment that their Step Three was sorely lacking, that is to say: completely absent. Not one lousy bullet welcomed him, and that set off Mark's danger sense something fierce. As far as he was concerned, Russian attitudes toward him really didn't rise above shooting, so if they weren't doing that, God knows they must've had something worse in mind.

Think of something worse.

Go ahead.

...

Yeah, it would pretty much have to be a flamethrower.

Mark saw it coming, that's why he put a car between himself and the user, but the attack still left him panting. It felt like the air was burning, superheated and thin, and he struggled to limp away from it before collapsing into a hyperventilating heap. The flame hadn't even come close to him, but even that was a small mercy - he was down and nearly out, gasping in the heat of the burning boxcar. The man with the flamethrower stepped out, his hands cradling a weapon as infernal as his grin. His eyes knew fire, in a way that humans weren't meant to. Mark raised the Calico, but it was an empty gesture - the weapon was jammed solid. If Mark had known that this was Nicolai's lieutenant Sasha, he...well, he would've still tried to kill him.

"Mark?" came a weak voice from inside the train car. Ded! The jammed Calico felt like the physical embodiment of Mark's frustration with the way things were going. He figured that he owed God some amusement value before going to hell, but did it have to be this way? Sasha raised the muzzle, Mark closed his eyes, and then there was a PING!

The tank strapped to Sasha's back slowly dripped fuel.

At the other end of the battlefield, Done lowered his iron-sighted M16 and cursed his luck. One shot, time for one shot and he had messed it up. He hadn't even meant to take on the flamethrower, that was the wind and the sights at work. What Done didn't know was that Vince had finally managed to set up his rifle for that perfect view of the battlefield. His shot struck true, going through Sasha and into the fuel tank.

Still in the Dragunov: B-32 (Armor-Piercing, Incendiary).

Needless to say, there was a big damn fireball and Mark wasn't it. Well, he almost was, since his pants caught on fire, but he already had the stopping and dropping part covered, so he just rolled like a motherfucker and shoveled sand on his legs. Sasha had rather less luck with this strategy, but then again, he was already dead and all motion of his resulted from his tendons being roasted in a sauce of boiling body fat. Mark picked himself from the ground, looked at Sasha, then at the Calico, then at the burning train car.

No. Not gonna happen. Not gonna let it happen.

With a new surge of adrenaline, the blistered skin of his legs and the exhaustion were forgotten; Mark simply plunged into the heat, throwing his weight against the door of the boxcar. Smoke in his eyes, smoke in his lungs, and he still pressed on, trusting his ears, stumbling for Boris's screaming. With a fumbling grab, he got the Russian by the collar and dragged him away. There was no way to be sure of the way back, no way to tell - he just turned and powered forward, slamming against a hot metal panel and being thrown back. No more oxygen, everything...so...hot...

Boris rose from below, maneuvering his shoulders close to Mark's arms; he dug his feet in, unleashed a war cry unique in its ferocity and shoved Mark against the wall like a battering ram, dislodging the panel; the two fell out of the car, Mark clutched Boris and they rolled away in the dirt. When they came to a stop, Mark was coughing his lungs out, acid tears running down his cheeks from the smoke. Boris wasn't coughing; in fact, he wasn't breathing. It took Mark a second to realize this, given the immense amount of pain that demanded to be felt, but he got on top of that, too, quite literally: he leaned over Boris and plunged his fist onto the Russian's chest in as close an approximation of CPR as he could manage.

Nothing.

Mark did his level best to get his own breath under control, tried it again, eventually even switching to proper presses. He even had a slight edge on the average CPR-using civilian - he knew where Boris's heart was.

Nothing.

"Motherfucker!" Mark shouted, pounding on Boris's chest.

Nothing.

He kept on working it even when he heard the sound of motorcycles behind him.

"Come! Back!" Mark screamed, tears still streaming down his face as he folded his hands and delivered a mighty blow to Boris's chest.

Nothing.

Mark looked up to see Nikolai tearing away on a dirt bike; almost blind with anger, he grabbed the Calico from the ground and pulled the trigger, but the gun still refused to fire - especially now that it was half-melted. The Russian hitman fixed him with a mixture of terror, respect and pity, then tore off.

Mark howled with rage.

Dropping the Calico like a bad habit, he rose to his knees and spread his arms, snapping the Hi-Powers from their spring-loaded holsters. He rose up, a phoenix from the ashes, and then the remaining Russians rode by and Mark cut them down, every shot a blood-splattering picture of brutal precision. Bikes wiped out, necks and bones snapped among shouts of agony, but Mark was just getting started. He emptied his left pistol at the fleeing Nicolai while running towards the bikes, kicked one of the mortally-wounded Russians off a still-running bike and righted it. With a painful rev of the engine, he let the rear wheel dig in before the bike just lurched forward, snapping forward like a rocket-boosted horse from hell. Mark had absorbed enough punishment to take down five men and he still wasn't done, not by a long shot; he gunned the dirt bike to the limits of its admittedly beefy engine, the raw hate coursing through his veins keeping him strong enough to ride the beast.

There's a moment of sheer terror in everyone's life. Nicolai's wasn't that Mark was still hunting him; it was Mark catching up. There didn't seem to be any good reason for him being able to do that, but maybe ignoring every throttle position besides "full" had something to do with it.

Nikolai didn't have much time to admire Mark's driving prowess, because a) the enforcer topped that by actually holding on with just his legs and one arm while b) raising his right arm to fire the Hi-Power in his hand. Shooting tires is a hard thing to do under the best circumstances, and to Nicolai's relief, even Mark couldn't manage such a feat. He realized too late that this was absolutely immaterial to the pursuit, because trying to dodge Mark's fire diverted Nicolai's attention away from the ground. One railroad tie taken at the wrong angle, and Nicolai's ride started oscillating as he hurtled towards and across the street before crashing onto the grounds of the Owl's Head sewage treatment plant; he barely avoided crashing head-on into a large assembly of silos by laying the bike down. Mark slid in just behind him as Nicolai stumbled away, his leg torn up from the semi-wipeout. Mark's bullets chased him towards the coast...oh God, the coast, maybe he could make it there, dive in and finally lose Mark. Or at least find some cover to hide behind...

Something slammed into his back, forcing him to fold and lie down for a bit. The late muzzle flash from Mark's gun didn't even register anymore.

Nikolai crawled on, momentarily forgetting how to stand up. A warning shot next to his head stopped even that. He froze, catching his breath, acutely hearing Mark reload the Hi-Power.

"Get up," Mark snarled, barely human. "Get up on your knees."

Nikolai didn't kneel for anyone. He had the tattoos to prove it. With a second wind in his veins, he turned and brought up his Makarov PB, but a bold move doesn't help when the other guy can see it coming a mile away. Mark fired thrice; one into Nikolai's arm to disabuse him of the notion that he'd ever fire a gun again, two into his knees in a bloody form of lead-based tattoo removal.

"You just don't get it, do you?!" Mark screamed, spittle dripping from his canines. "End of the motherfucking road!" His chest heaved, and with every breath it seemed like some of the rage was fading from him. "You little commie bastard."

To his credit, Nikolai didn't whimper or plead for mercy; instead, he struggled to free the pistol from his now cramped-up hand. Mark closed the distance and stepped on the gun arm, producing a new scream of pain from the Russian. Without missing a beat, he grabbed Nikolai's leg - hanging on at the knee by a few muscles and tendons - and dragged the flailing gangster behind him, the way a hunter might drag a deer carcass too heavy for his shoulders. When they got to the open sewage pools, it dawned on Nikolai what Mark's plan was, and he started to scream in earnest. The distant sound of police sirens seemed to promise salvation for the Russian - better jail than death! -, but Mark wasn't acting with a lot of care. A rational criminal would've looked to his own escape; Mark calmly dragged Nikolai to the edge of a pool, grabbed him by the scalp and lifted his head from the ground. Mark's breathing was flat and mechanical, and his voice hovered a handful of degrees above liquid nitrogen.

"Eat shit and die," Mark said.

And then he tossed Nikolai into the pool.

A criminal with even half a mind for practical concerns would've made his exit there, but Mark couldn't resist watching Nikolai struggle to swim in the sewage; after a few seconds, Mark raised his pistol one last time and shot Nikolai, finally pushing him below the surface. As if to add insult to injury, Mark collected the tastes in his mouth into a major-league loogie and spit it into the pool. With a sort of grim satisfaction, he turned to face the music while the motorcycle cops closed in.

Wait...motorcycles?

What actually pulled up a few seconds ahead of the red&blue lights were two dirt bikes; one with Vince, the other with Done and Boris. Mark's emotional high from seeing his friend outside the context of a funeral was cut short when Done reached into his pocket and tossed Mark a little leather-bound something - an NYPD shield. No time for questions, so Mark climbed on the bike with Vince and the foursome motored off to the South, fading into the night with a hell of a lot of fire and dead Russians behind them.

So much for the Cold War.

Two Guns 17 - Everything is Broken

2008-01-25T22:57:00.000+01:00

Sharon stood in a ballet of snowflakes, performed on the windy pathways of Central Park. The ice danced around her, each frozen tear of God on a course more complex than the collected writings of Spinoza. She hummed an old tune and embraced the world, her coat open and her arms spread. With the patience of a deer stalker, Mark moved behind her, softening his steps until they were too faint for human ears. His breath was hot against her neck, his hands like intense sunshine on her belly. While he drew her closer, she reached back and grabbed his head, bringing it forward for a soft kiss.

“Hold me,” she whispered.

He pulled her tighter, and she turned around, resting her head on his shoulder. He drew his coat around her, sheltering her from the cold for a moment.

They danced with the snowflakes.

---

“I had a lot of fun tonight, you know,” Sharon said with a slight giggle as they walked down the hallway outside her apartment. The jaunt through Central Park had exhausted her - even the best snuggling can’t hold off dropping core temperatures for long.
“That’s, uh, good,” he replied, scratching an itch on the back of his head. “Vince helped me plan that, you know. I’m hopeless with wines.”
“So, how long have you guys known each other?”
“Oh, we go back. Almost shot him in ‘84, back when he was still with the Cosa Nostra…but he could tell that ship was sinking, so he changed teams.”
“Ratioli’s a rat?”
“Don’t say that around him, Shar. It’s been all uphill for Vince to get anywhere after that, but now he’s the boss’s bodyguard. That takes a lot of trust, so when I tell you he’s solid, he’s solid. You get his word on anything, that’s the truth right there.”
“And he knows his wines.”
Mark grinned. “That he does.”

The door was ajar. Mark froze in his steps and motioned for Sharon to do the same, then reached below his coat for a holster that wasn’t there.

Dammit, you get sloppy one time…

Sharon tapped on his shoulder to get his attention, then bowed down and raised the hem of her dress. With a deft move, she removed a small Walther PPK from her thigh holster and readied it. Mark gave her a questioning look; she just mouthed “Daddy” and gave him a small smile. Resigned to his fate, Mark silently stepped behind her, watching the hallway behind them. Sharon put her back against the wall and proceeded towards the door, elbows bent and PPK against her shoulder, ready to let it drop into firing stance in the blink of an eye. Reaching the door, she steadied herself and mentally reviewed her training. She would swoop into the doorframe, take a quick peek and fire at anything threatening. If there were no targets, she’d keep moving to the other side of the doorframe, take a breather, slice the pie around the corner. Piece of cake, literally.

“I’m also good with locks!” came Vince’s shout from inside the apartment. Sharon took a deep breath – cursing under the same – then spun into the doorframe, quickly sweeping the room but keeping her trigger finger in check. Other than Vince – in the process of cleaning her guns –, there was nobody in there.
“Goddammit, Vincent, don’t do that ever again,” Sharon said, lowering her gun and raising her voice. “I could’ve shot you.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” he said nonchalantly, wiping some oil from her Beretta’s firing pin. “But I thought that if I called out, I wouldn’t startle you when you come in – because I know you’re the kind of woman who shoots what startles her.”
“Hesitation kills,” Sharon remarked, switched the safety on the PPK back on and set her boot on the table to holster it again.
“Hey, Vince,” Mark said as he closed the door behind him. “Uh, thanks for the cleanin’, we hadn’t gotten around to that part yet…”
“I know you usually need a poke, and Detective Collins here just spread a couple pounds of half-melted muck on the table…” – Sharon checked the table under her boot, smiled sheepishly and began to take off the boots before she could spread the mess further – “…but that’s actually not what I came here for.”
“Oh. Oh!” Mark slapped his forehead. “Christmas Dinner! Man, I’ve been a total jerk, all this romantic dinner planning stuff and I didn’t even ask if you had a spot. Well, fuck…we didn’t get doggy bags, because we finished our stuff. Even the salad, that was kind of a weird feeling, empty plates and all. It just wasn’t a lot of food, I guess…in fact, I’m kinda hungry enough for seconds. Sharon?”
“I could eat.”
“Right! Chinese cool?”
“Chinese very cool,” Sharon said, wiping the muck off the table with some paper towels.
“Vince?”

Mark’s friend just shook his head slowly.

“Still not what I’m here for,” the Italian hitman said. “You forgot your cellphone…”

“…crap,” Mark said, faking surprise quite effectively. He hadn’t forgotten his phone, it was more like ‘deliberately left behind’. What could happen in a few hours?
“Don’t worry, I covered for you. But something came up and I had to see you, because we have to take care of that situation now.”
“Situation?”
“We got photos in the mail. Boris in a bed down at Dollar’s, with yesterday’s newspaper.”

That could happen in a few hours.

“That’s all kinds of fucked up,” Mark said. “Dollar is neutral, he wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe not, but the Russians might do it to him.”
“So it’s a trap,” Sharon threw in.
“That’s the only fact we’ve got,” Vince said, nodding as he put the Beretta back together. “Trap at Dollar’s.”
“Yeah, that…” Mark began, but stopped when Vince pointed to a shoulder rig with two Browning Hi-Power pistols hanging off the chair. “Vince, where would I be without you?”
“Retired,” Sharon threw in. “Peaceful life, blowing your savings to hell with the girl you love.”

Mark gave her a glance, trying to figure out if she was yanking his chain or spilling more than she intended to, but Vince brought down the moment by handing Sharon the reassembled Beretta.

“This is my guarantee, Detective: When you’re rolling with me, you may be up shit creek, but you’ll always have a paddle.”

---

“I think you’re too trusting, Mark,” Sharon said bluntly as the trio walked down the alley to Dollar’s basement door. “I mean, there’s the family stuff, right? Alfredo was untouchable, Alexandra’s so fresh she doesn’t have her own business cards and you back her, Vincent can do no wrong – I’m sorry, Vincent, this isn’t meant to be a dig at your personal trustworthiness but still, this is messed up. It’s not just that, though, I mean, I can sorta understand that” – Mark knocked at the door – “but then we get to people like Dollar. This guy’s a bastard and yet you’re going in, fully believing he was set up by the Russians? And let’s not forget that the whole reason we’re here is this Boris guy, who’s a Russian but somehow definitely not in league with these guys, who I haven’t even met and who might be fucking dead already…just saying.”
“Are you done?” Mark asked sweetly.
“Pretty much, yes.”

Dollar opened the door. Mark socked him in the gut with a punch like a brick dropped from orbit.

“I can see what you’re getting at,” Mark said as he stepped in. “Sometimes, I’m just too nice.”
“Okay, now that was gratuitous,” Sharon said, wincing sympathetically at Dollar’s squashed guts.
“Just a second,” Mark said and turned to Dollar, who was quite busy writhing on the floor, his jaw locked up too tightly to scream out the pain. “Let’s make this quick. I know you’ve been fucked by the Russians, and I can appreciate that this puts you in a difficult position.”
Dollar moaned incoherently. Mark went on.
“I know that you were going to tell me everything anyway, because I know you are an honest man. However, we’ve never been in a direct conflict, so I needed to show you that I am serious and will do the safety dance on your kidneys if I smell bullshit. Are we clear so far?”
Dollar’s condition was improving – not only could he understand what Mark was saying, he also managed to nod.
“Good. Me and the gang need coffee, so we’re going to help ourselves to a few cups. You just get up whenever, we’ll be waiting in the lounge.”

Without further ado, Mark stepped over Dollar, while Sharon followed more reluctantly. Vince closed the door behind him and looked down to Dollar, shaking his head.

“Woah, that was a damn good punch. You okay down there, Doc?”
“Fuck…you…” Dollar managed to spit out.
“Sounds okay to me. Hey, guys, I’m gonna go black on my coffee, right?”
“Right!” Mark shouted back.
“Hell of a punch,” Vince said, then moved on.

Dollar got back on his feet. Eventually.

---

“Okay, mo’fuckers,” Dollar said, spreading his records across the table in the lounge. He seemed to take special pleasure in making Mark lift his cup of joe from the surface. “After reviewing my documentation real careful like, I got a theory on how ol’ Boris got into this mess. Though I don’t know why you crackers need that shit, seeing as I gave you the fucking business card…”
“Yeah, yeah, that tells us where the trap is,” Mark said. “We need to figure out what makes it tick, and that means we need to know the people who assembled it.”
“Right, whatever. Let’s start here. December 12^th, some Russian guy came in and bought a handful of antipsychotics off me. Haldol, specifically. That’s what they use when crazy people need to go sleepy-sleepy, but it’s got real therapeutic uses and shit at lower doses – plus, honestly, why the fuck should I care? His cash was good.”
“They track down Boris,” Mark threw in, “then they knock him out with this?”
“Possibly. Anyway, loooong hole here. Don’t see any Russians here for a long time, but if they used all the Haldol and didn’t buy none from other dealers, that shoulda given them a week or so of having Boris under control. Enough time for torture, MKULTRA shit, whatever. By the time your meeting rolls around, they’ve broken him. They get him to call in, shit goes down, you end up here. At the same time, somebody does a smash & grab from the Russians, kidnaps Boris, takes him to the pier. Probably to kill him. But he just throws Boris into the water – me, I woulda put a couple slugs through the skull, just to make sure. Anyway, by this time, Nicolai’s there, he kills the kidnapper and rescues Boris, to hear him tell it. They both show up here, I do my thing, Boris gets better over the next couple days. I discharged him just a few hours ago.”
“Wait a second,” Mark yelled. “Boris was here while you treated me, and you didn’t tell me a thing?”

Dollar leaned back and smiled.

“Neutral ground, baby,” Dollar said.
“And how the fuck did he get in when Sharon was here?”
“You really think I have only one entrance, sucker?” Dollar said. “’sides, what were you gonna do to him here? I wouldn’t let you fight here and pickups are neutral, too.”
“Pickup? They kidnapped him and you helped them!”
“You seem to be under tha impression that I’m on their side, or maybe yours right now. Fuck that noise. I’m on the side of green and the Russians had deeper pockets, you hear me?”

Mark considered that a down payment for at least two more kidney compressions, but Sharon held him back.

“This is going nowhere. We need more facts. Who was the kidnapper?” Sharon asked. “And why does Nicolai want Boris alive so badly?”
“Fuck if I know, girl. That’s what makes this such a big fucking waste of time, you guys are trying to play puzzle but I got a third of the pieces here, tops.”
“Very encouraging, Dollar.”
“You want me to put on a skirt and do a little cheerleading dance for ya? Now, guys, lemme just say something here, kind of an Uncle Dollar’s Moral of the story: Screw this investigation shit. You wanna stick your neck out for poor old Dedushka, get the fuck on with it before the Russians cancel him for good. You’re proficient at wrecking shit, so wreck shit. If you make it, hey, you can just ask him to fill in the blanks when you’re having a brew together.”
“Alright then,” Mark said, rising from his seat. He spat out a “Thank you”, his mind still weighing the loss of face over starting a fight here with the satisfaction of caving Dollar’s nose in.
“Thank me with cash,” Dollar said. “Oh, and if you hit me again, I’m gonna hunt you down and sew your asshole shut, got that?”

Mark counted off benjamins from his money clip, noted Dollar’s facial expression and finally just gave him the whole thing.

“You’re the worst person I know,” Mark said.
“Oh, that’s real funny,” Dollar replied with a grin. “Seeing how I’m the only guy in the room who never killed a man…”
“I heard different things about ‘nam…”
That added a glint of madness to Dollar’s eyes, as something broke through the marijuana-addled surface.
“Fuck ‘nam, everybody’s talking shit about ‘nam but I didn’t kill nobody, says so right in my records, zero confirmed kills, and I only ever shot to scare Charlie! ‘sides, we didn’t murder them. I defended my fuckin’ country, unlike you pansies, so don’t you go telling me about fucking ‘nam. That was the will of the people, and we gave it to them good and hard until they cried Uncle! You wanna hear my theory of justice, Simmons? Y’all are DA jackpots waitin’ to happen. I pay my taxes as a medical fuckin’ consultant, my records are all in code, I’m so clean you can run a blood culture lab on my police file. Ask yourself, if a cop car stops you and runs your ID, what kinda judgement is America gonna level on you, as a person? I ain’t afraid of no all-white jury, how do you feel about twelve of your ‘peers’?”

Mark just stared at him.

“Violence is the, uh, the last resort of the incompetent,” Dollar recited. “Now go kill shit, I got work to do.”

Disengaging from that particular trainwreck, Mark turned back to the team, finding Sharon with a worried look and Vince on the phone.

“What’s the matter, Shar?”
“I’m…how do I put this? I’m not sure I should come with you guys. I mean, the Silvestro thing, I knew that was wrong but it wasn't going to stop until we put a bullet in the guy. I’ve no stake whatsoever in this, though, and I am a cop. I can’t just go around killing people.”
“Nikolai had you at gunpoint. He’s been fucking with us all the way. We’re just evening the score.”
“I’m not saying he should be free to do this, but can’t we do this without violence? I mean, we know where he is, I can call in an ESU team.”
“And how’s that gonna be different, Shar? You think there won’t be a gunfight just because those guys have badges?”
“Yeah, I thought about that.”
"So?”

Sharon sighed.

“That’s what I’m stuck on at the moment.”
“The problem is that I can’t just leave you behind.”
“I’m your assignment.”
“You’re also my girlfriend,” Mark said with a smile, “so I have to protect you twice as much.”
“This is how every crooked cop story ever starts. Rules become inconveniences. And I refuse to play this point of no return game. If I fucked up with Silvestro, if I made a mistake by getting involved with you, that’s a problem, but I won’t keep digging the hole.”

Mark sighed deeply. Say the right thing…

“You know what Jesus told the prostitute, right?” he said.
“Are you saying I’m a prostitute?”
“More importantly,” Vince threw in, “does that mean you’re Jesus?”

There was the glimmer of a smile on Sharon’s face, so he ignored the barbs and continued.

“He said, go forth and sin no more.” Mark lifted Sharon’s head by the chin. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
"I just can't do this," Sharon said, playing with the strap of her shoulder holster. "DA's office is already on me for the hotel shootout, and this isn't really my fight anyway."
"I understand," Mark nodded. "But I can't leave you home alone."
"I'll just stay here."
"Aw hell no!" Dollar exclaimed, trying to punctuate his expression with an evil stare, but Mark beat him quite squarely at that.
"I don't like leaving you here," the assassin said. "On the other hand, I do like pissing off Dollar."
"So it's settled?" Sharon asked, a small smile returning to her face.
"Be back soon."

Sharon reached out, narrowly missing Mark's hand as he turned away and left with Vincent. Sharon stood there, arms crossed, until the sound of Mark's car faded into the distance.

"Fuck you, bitch," Dollar growled. "Fuck you and the gangster you ride in on."
"I'm thinking hot chocolate," Sharon said.
"Screw you. There, how's that sound? I figure, well, that bitch gets a lot of fucking, maybe she don't even hear that anymore. So, screw you. Wait, he does that, too, don't he? I bet he's all sensitive and goes down on ya real good." Dollar's face switched into a grin, as if somebody had flipped his switch from surly to sweet. "But if you into that shit, babe,you's wasting your time on white boy, 'cause I do like me women who know what they want, your standards can't be that high and we got some time to pass..."
"With marshmallows." Dollar took a deep breath for his next assault, but Sharon quickly continued her line. "If you don't have any, your teeth will do."
"I don't think you can actually pull that shit off, sugar. I'm a trained fuckin' soldier, US Army, I got me a Purple Heart and shit, and you..."

With a stunning economy of violence, Sharon elbowed Dollar right on the nose. He went down with a yelp and rolled around the floor in pain the second time in as many hours.

"No sugar," she said, then went off in search of somewhere to sit down.

Two Guns 16 - Sweet Dreams

2008-01-01T00:57:00.000+01:00

The streets of Manhattan were busy on Christmas Eve, but Mark and Sharon didn't seem to acknowledge that. They walked down 5th Avenue hand in hand, little snowflakes dancing around them.

"So what did you want to be?" she asked.
"Astronaut. I thought it was gonna get me closer to God."

Sharon smiled.

"Okay, you're smiling," Mark acknowledged. "But I'm still confused. This is your 'Keep talking' smile, not your 'I'm about to mock you' smile."
"How many smiles do I have?" she purred.
"Quite a few, but shouldn't you know?"
"I rarely practice my smiles in front of a mirror," Sharon explained. "That's like asking me about the hairs in the back of my neck, how am I supposed to see that?"
"I thought being a woman came with full control over all the little details that drive men insane."
"Maybe it does, but I traded my wiles for soldier's hands and sailor's tongue. Now I can cuss with the best of them, but strangely enough it scares them off when it comes to dating."
"Oh, come on. You're smart, you're hot, don't tell me I'm your first guy."
"Would you want to know if there had been others?"
"Of course I would! A good relationship can stand up to honesty and comparisons. Mind you, it's pummeling exes and potential rebounds with a baseball bat that really makes a couple tight."
"It figures I date a hitman just after the shrink lays my revenge fantasies to rest."
"You see a shrink?" he asked; they stopped at a pedestrian crossing waiting for the signal to change.

Sharon snuggled up closer.

"Many cops do. Police work is stressful, even when people aren't trying to kill you in particular. Why do you think I smoke?"
"Because you want to sound like Clint Eastwood?"

She gently elbowed him in the ribs, fortunately not on the injured side.

"Okay, message received, funny time is over," Mark said, trying not to wince. "So there's a lot of stress."
"I never wanted to buy into that 'thin blue line' bullshit. We're all just people, we're all trying to get through the day. I figured, hey, everybody knows the rules, occasionally they gamble and occasionally they lose their shit, but we're all human, right? That's what I used to think when I started, but around here, idealism seems to get you kicked harder. I get people like Silvestro, or even Nikolai, they're ruthless and it's all about power for them, but every now and then you go after a really sick bastard. I used to be in Vice, you know."
"Ooh..." Mark drawled, but Sharon interrupted him.
"Not undercover, don't get your hopes up. Anyway, we were crackin' down on this guy in Queens...well, long story short, child pornography."

Mark's hand tightened as they crossed the street.

"And it wasn't even that he had raped those kids, made photos and sold them...no, that was his fucking hobby. He sold them, but just to cover his costs. He wasn't even making any fucking money off it, and best of all, he'd been doing it for years. The only way we were able to track him down is because he'd lost his job, so he tried reaching out to new customers and got one of our informants."
"That's fucked up."
"We got a conviction on three cases. Three cases. That was all we could prove. He'd been doing it for God knows how long and we barely got him locked away for ten years. Now, that was extreme. I'm not trying to go for moral panic here, okay? Most of the time, we nailed those guys, we had a decent percentage of convictions, and he was like a whole different level, a freak accident. But if you ask me, even one's too many. The whole thing tore me up pretty bad, I asked for a transfer to Organized Crime. I figured, hey, at least these guys have a proper motive going on. The Mafia doesn't kill people because it gets them off."
"What would you have done to him? I mean, if you could've done anything you wanted."
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like breaking his face, good and hard, but I wouldn't have acted on that. I'm a cop, I enforce the law and sometimes you just gotta be better than you'd like to be. Paperwork, gunfights, forget it - being a cop is doing it the hard way, every time."
"Character is what you are in the dark," Mark said with a rigid face.

Sharon pulled back and gave him a distrustful look. Mark shrugged.

"I read books, too," he said, and smiled.

---

Ded wasn't dead, and that was a crying shame. Sure, there was a basic gratefulness for being alive, but nothing compared to the feeling of sucking icy water into his lungs, the panic, the fear...and the knowledge that it was possible they'd do it to him again, just for kicks. Ded was too old to develop new phobias, or so he tried to tell himself. No more swimming for this Russian.

Then he opened his eyes. Bad move.

"All yours, chief," he heard Dollar say. Dollar...what was he doing here? His eyes managed to dial down the illumination from searing photon daggers to a more reasonable dimness, and he spotted Nikolai at the side of the bed, counting off cash for the underground doctor.

"You..." he managed to say, but found his hands chained to the bed. Even if they hadn't been, he was in no shape to fight.
"You'd best start sucking my dick now, old man," Dollar said. "Hypothermia, water in your lungs, no heartbeat, not to mention all the shit that happened to you before you stumbled into Superfund River - you were a mess when you came in, a big stinking mess. Thank your lucky stars that your pal here jumped in after you and dragged you out of there. By all rights, that shoulda killed him, too."
Ded looked over to Nikolai, who gave him a curiously friendly nod. "He's not my pal," Ded said.
"3000 bucks says he is," Dollar said, counting his bounty. "Oh, and I managed to set that finger right. No piano sessions, but you'll have some mobility."
"Why are you doing this, Nicky? Berkovitz was about to rid you of your biggest problem and you shoot the guy?"
"I never meant to kill you, Boris," Nikolai said. "I respect you. When the war is won, I will gladly return you to power - and keep you on the right path. Now, I had an agreement with Berkovitz that he would keep himself and his Captain out of this, but he thought he could make his own play. Instead, he suffered the fate he had laid out for you. It seems fitting, somehow. Anyway, we will keep you in a safe house until this blows over and we have eliminated Marcus Simmons."
"Simmons? What happened to the kid?"

Dollar looked to Nikolai.

"I patched him up," the doctor said. "I don't play favorites."
"I respect that," Nikolai answered. "You take the Hippocratic oath seriously."
"I also got me an accountant, tells me that makin' money is good."

Nikolai smiled, but Ded grinned.

"Nicky, I got news for you. You fucked it up. Simmons will wipe his ass with your moustache."
"You have been unconscious for the better part of a week, Boris." Nikolai scratched the back of his neck. "We have not heard a peep from your 'kid'. He is clearly marshalling his forces for a decisive strike. But rest assured, we are working on the problem. This time, we will tackle him at a location of our choosing."
"I won't help you, Nicky. If you think I'll trick him again, you'd better just shoot me now."
"Fortunately, this trick does not require your active participation. You remember Sasha, yes? He is my trusted lieutenant, and he likes you, too. Why, he was visiting you just yesterday..."

Dollar gulped, while Nikolai reached into his coat and produced a handful of photos.

"He thought it would be great if you had some...what is the word? Ah, yes...memento of your stay here. We will see to it that Marcus Simmons receives copies of these. He should recognize the place..."
"Hold on there," Dollar said. "3000 bucks one-time doesn't make me your accomplice, Commissar Backstabsky."
"I have considered this," Nicolai said, then handed a business card to Dollar. "I do not require you to lie for me. When Marcus Simmons shows up, simply give him this. I can pay you for the service, if you wish it so."
"I ain't leading Simmons into no trap of yours."
"Please do not torture yourself with the notion of choice, Doctor Walker. The photos are on their way already, which means Marcus Simmons will come here and ask you about anything you know of Boris's location. I suppose you could refuse to give him this address, but I believe he is rather liable to just beat it out of you. Feel free to protest that this was not your idea or that it will lead him into a trap. He is unlikely to care."
"The patient's ready to move," Dollar snarled. "I suggest y'all move before I develop a conscience and schedule you for brain surgery with my four-four."
"No hard feelings, Doctor Walker," Nikolai said with a smile. "I'd hate for a good man like you to start picking a side - especially the wrong side..."

Two Guns 15 - Hungry Like The Wolf

2007-12-20T19:16:00.000+01:00

Christmas Eve in Sharon's apartment didn't look very Christmas-y at all; in fact, it looked rather like the rest of the year, a kind of cold disregard for holiday spirit that would make Baby Jesus cry. Well, at least that's what Mark made of it when he stepped inside; there was a pile of guns on her table in various states of cleaning, and Sharon looking stressed out while talking on the phone. Mark set down the large shopping bag, closed the door behind him and leaned against the wall, hands deep in his pockets.

"...I understand, but you're not...I'm not putting you down, I'm just saying...Look, if you'll listen to me for a second. Nobody's there now...yes, yes, emergency response. Okay. Nobody you want to talk to is there. It's Christmas. You do know what Christmas is, right?...Yeah, you too, bitch."

Mark raised an eyebrow, Sharon raised her arms and nobody raised their voice. Sharon just ran her fingers through her hair, eyes closed and head tilted back, as if the annoyance could be massaged out of her skull. Mark stepped forward, a fresh suit under a slightly classier trench coat. He walked behind her, clasped his hands in front of her belly and bowed his head to whisper into her ear.

"Is this a bad time?"
"No worse than any other," she replied. "Aftershave?"
"Some people indulge their inner slob, I indulge my inner snob."
"Occasionally?" she asked playfully.
"Very occasionally. Now, I know just the naughty thing to do..."
"Go on."
"I say you don't pick up that phone tonight..."
"Kinky."
"...and let the machine get your calls."
"I'm shivering from excitement, but I don't really believe in delegating. Now suppose I give in to this delightful madness, what would you have us do with the evening?"
"I have a reservation at Elio's," he said, his gaze shifting about as if he was John Wilkes Booth on the way to the gun shop.
"That's great. I could go for something to eat."
"...and a new dress."
"That's great, too, but what do I wear?"

Sharon realized about two seconds too late that the placement of Mark's hands was no accident; she doubled over and cringed from the revenge tickling, then burst out laughing before she could free herself. He pulled her back in, lifted her off the ground and turned on the spot, carrying her to the door.

"How did you - wooaah! - how did you know my size?" she giggled, finally getting a grip on Mark's hands and forcing them apart. To his credit, he let her down before she had to continue to the painful stage of that move.
"I can read clothes tags, too," he said with a knowing smile. He grabbed the shopping bag and held it open; Sharon drew a long evening dress from it, made of black velvet with a greenish tinge. Wordlessly but with a smile on her face, she held it up to her body for a size sanity check. "Think I know every saleswoman down Fifth Avenue now," he continued.
"It's lovely. And my color, too."
"The photos helped."
"Huh?"

Mark silently pointed to a cupboard. Sharon gave him a glance.

"It occurs to me now," he said by way of apology, "that I could have just asked to look at some pictures of you."
"Oh, you want to get to know me better, then?" she said with a devilish smile. "I have a slideshow, family history...just the thing after lunch tomorrow. And then you'll tell me about your family, okay?" Without waiting for a reply, she snuck away into the bathroom to prepare. That was a prudent measure, as no reply was forthcoming - Mark just stood there, wordlessly. Slowly, a small smile snuck onto his lips.

Well played, milady. Well played.

---

What makes a gentleman, then? Mark looked the part, but Sharon found the little touches lacking. She topped up her glass with more Pergole Torte '79, and wistfully remembered a time where she thought any man who could date her would do this for her, no questions asked. But she could tell Mark wasn't being a jerk about this - he just didn't know, and she didn't want to lecture him. The wine was excellent, no doubt, but that wasn't on her mind - the more time she spent with Mark, the more he managed to convince her that his omnicompetent act was just that. Lots of trivia, but raw, unfocussed. And that's how he worked, basically: he would land his first strike around a nugget of insight, then switch topics before a true master could tell he was faking it. That didn't make him incompetent, far from it, but it did make him seem more...human. And in turn, she felt better about herself, once she stopped assuming things and realized that she knew a lot of things he'd never heard of. There was something like parity in that.

"Thank you for the dinner. For the dress," she said, some small blush escaping from beneath the makeup. "And for everything else."
"It's been a pleasure," he replied, raising his glass. "To chance."
"To chance," she repeated and took another sip of wine.
"Did you enjoy the ride?" he asked, setting down his glass. His eyes twinkled with the steel of business, if only for a moment.
"A lot. And I don't want to stop here."

This is the moment it all goes to shit, she thought.

"All I can promise you is terror for breakfast, pressure for lunch, and aggravation for sleep," he said. He tried to look serious, but she couldn't hold back her grin.
"That was a terrible movie," she said, laughing softly.
"I watched it five times. I'm one of those men who dig terrible movies." She laughed some more. "I also never share my popcorn. You'll always have to buy your own bag. And I sing in the shower."

He waited for her to quiet down, then leaned forward.

"Could you..." he whispered, "could you love a guy like that?"
"I already do," she answered, then leaned in and kissed him.

No room for thought, just candlelight in his eyes and hellfire in her blood.

---

"Evenin', Captain," came the words from the medical examiner's mouth; Paul Whitton hardly registered them anymore. It was like listening to a record of Bing Crosby's White Christmas - eventually, you don't need to listen anymore, you already hear every word in your head. To the morgue staff's credit, the place actually looked slightly festive, with evergreen twigs on the walls, a diorama of Santa Claus on his sleigh and even mistletoe over the door to the supply closet. Whitton couldn't imagine much romance going on here, but he knew that people down here could get very bored and very lonely. All bets are off when you work shifts in a basement.

"Dental work checks out, then?" he asked; the ME merely nodded.

The corpse wasn't pretty, even for a corpse. Just a bloated, middle-aged guy, his face blown off by a rendezvous with firepower. The kind of Kodak moment that made Whitton thankful for his insomnia.

"Any foul play?" he asked.
"Nothing fancy, no. Just got a bullet through the back of his skull, it bounced around a bit inside, then tore out through the front."
"Caliber?"
"Something small and subsonic. Like I said, it went back out, so I can't get any more precise than that. Only thing I can say for sure is that this was an execution, well-aimed shot. Not point blank, though, there's no powder burns on the skin."
"Restraints?"
"No, and that's the strangest thing. It's like he just stood there while somebody shot him in the head."
"But the shot came from behind. Somebody could've snuck up on him."
"Possible, but this was pretty close. We're talking about a pretty sneaky bastard here, Captain."
"I know a couple of those. Well, that's it, then. Thanks for your time, Josh."
"Merry Christmas, Captain."
"Yeah, merry Christmas."

He waited until the medical examiner was out of earshot, then stepped over to the corpse and bowed down.

"And merry fucking Christmas to you, too. For all it's worth."

Leaving the corpse behind, Whitton wasted little time on his way to the elevator. He stepped inside and felt the doors close like the embrace of a lover long gone, the cab shaking as it brought him back to the city of the living.

Goddammit. What happened to you, Berkovitz?

Life - Chapter 1

2007-12-05T17:45:00.001+01:00

Check the suit. Iris hated checking the suit.

The suit, as the engineers kept reminding her, was her only shot at surviving the many ugly things that could befall an exoatmospheric vehicle. They also reminded her not to call it a "spaceship" at every turn. These are the kind of things her Master's in Exogeology degree had glossed over. They make you study alien rocks for a year, a whole year of your life spent on nothing but looking at alien rocks, talking about alien rocks and thinking about alien rocks - and all of that on top of her Bachelor's, with a Geology major. It had gotten so bad that Iris couldn't even go for a walk anymore without pondering what had shaped the ground beneath her feet, the hills on the horizon or even Earth itself. Of course, after that this particular level of indoctrination had been achieved, the first thing they'd done to poor Iris - she of 16 years and still in possession of her bleach-blonde hair - was sign her up for an environment that was so rockless as to be a mockery of her profession.

They reminded her of the suit again. Pay attention to the drill, Iris. It's about the suit.

For all intents and purposes, Iris was as much wearer as inhabitant of the suit, and had been for the last 3 months. That was a strange thing, because those 16 years of living on Mother Earth had taught her to change her clothes every day, lest they get dirty and sticky, and who would want to wear the same thing every day? Oh, they did build clothing like the suit, which didn't get dirty or sticky, but what was the point? Most people changed their clothes every day, no matter what, so why make things complicated? Worse, it made her feel like one of the socials. Government-issued smartclothes and no money to spare for the real thing, not to mention that jumpsuits don't really look all that good. In theory, the suit - her suit - might've sounded like a more attractive thing, a unitard of sorts, given that it was supposed to mold itself to the wearer, but that was mostly on the inside layer. Watching Iris in her suit suggested that she had curves, but didn't really show them off. Like a quantum theory of fashion, wearing the suit was neither modest (because there was the next big disconnect: no underwear!) nor particularly flattering. The great egalitarian ideal of Government Issue: makes everyone look equally stupid. In this case, the torso armor (no, wait: protective plating!) and life support backpack obscured anything remotely interesting.

There was no excuse to take off the suit, even. It wasn't uncomfortable, because it fit you perfectly, it carried its own weight - in fact, it made Iris's exposed skin (her head) feel that much worse in comparison, given that it wasn't enjoying the suit's regulation of skin temperature and humidity. You didn't even have to take it off for bodily needs, and so it wasn't designed to be taken off easily, period. It was locked onto you and there it stayed. Instead of dealing with the inefficiencies of the human digestive system (and the engineers wouldn't shut up about that, either: ew! gross!), nutrients and hydration level were regulated by the suit. Direct bloodstream injection. The result was a constant sort of low-level churning in her guts as carefully-dosed drugs told her colon to keep working, lest it shut down. Clearly, dignity wasn't in the budget. The chewing gum in her mouth was losing its flavor, and even worse she couldn't indulge in her childhood habit of swallowing it, either - this was just for flavor, for keeping her jaw muscles working. They showed her the payload calculations for old-school consumables - they made her eyes water. The ship - she persisted in calling it that - would've been four times bigger, with real food and showers and more than the emergency toilet. Clearly the engineers were furious: stupid humans! They need to use their muscles to keep them in working shape, dumbest thing anybody could ever come up with! They were working on this, she felt. Whipping up a strain of humans who don't break down their muscles and bones when they're not used. The greatest problem with human spaceflight was including humans, but sometimes you didn't have that choice, and Iris imagined that this is what inevitably snapped the mind of every engineer in exoplanetary R&D. It made them crazy, and then they twisted that into some sort of punishment for what they couldn't keep away from their beautiful mechanical spaceship. Whip the apes to remind them that they're not welcome. Like with the helmets.

They were getting to the helmet part. God, how she hated the helmet part.

It wasn't enough that she'd left her hair on the floor of the spaceport ("Do you know how much it costs to boost your ponytail into orbit, Miss?") and arrived with a close shave; at least that was convenient when she couldn't really wash her hair, and reducing the number of things that could get stuck between your helmet and the suit collar when you're depending on the two forming a vacuum-proof seal, that was a good thing. (Engineers say that the seal isn't vacuum-proof, it's atmosphere-proof since it keeps the air in. Iris nods. She doesn't feel like fighting over this.)

The helmet. Iris slipped it over her head and felt the helmet come alive around her - the flickering lights of the display built into the faceplate, the clicking interlocks at the collar, the soft test tones of the loudspeakers.

WELCOME

Yeah, you too, helmet. Missed you really bad.

The helmet was a particularly strange piece of, if not technology, then doctrine. One size fits all, exchangeable, with a good deal of helmets to spare for emergency use. Iris considered the payload penalty of that and shivered. She found that she could think of fifty things, little comfort items, that they could've brought for the same weight and volume as a single spare helmet, but apparently this was the right amount of redundancy from a safety engineering perspective. Worse, they smelled. Not overtly, but subtly, because Iris's nose wasn't getting much of a workout and frantically latched onto any recognizable smell. No body odor on the suits, obviously, no other discarded clothing, but the helmets were regularly brought out for drills, at complete random, and then put away and forgotten. They didn't get dirty as such, but they did get used. Iris had heard that cleaning out helmets after drills was actually a job, a viable job, on the big deep exploration vessels, but on a small scoutship like this, mission duration didn't make it necessary. Or maybe the cleaning gear weighed too much. Either way, helmets smelled. Iris could smell the Chief in this one, and worse, she was desperate enough to think this was a good thing.

Boring piece of shit, this expedition. The helmet didn't come off. The engineers laughed.

"That's how we should all walk around," one of them said. "Massive weight savings if you don't keep the vehicle pressurized..."
"Not funny," Iris managed to say; the helmet microphone caught this, the AI determined that the lack of code words precluded it being intended as radio traffic, and instead routed it out of a small, pipsqueaky speaker built into the helmet. The engineers laughed their asses off. It was like talking to someone over a can & string "telephone".

Then there was a horrible tearing noise, and it was all the worse because Iris didn't hear it so much as feel it. The deck under her feet groaned. The engineers had good reflexes, pushing themselves towards the next equipment locker for their helmets, but it simply happened too quickly. In a flash, half the metal around them was gone, and everything was hot and bright. Iris couldn't see much of the brightness, because the helmet darkened the visor at once, shielding her eyes from the intense light and shifting the cooling into overdrive to keep her cool inside while the outer layers of the suit slowly radiated the heat it had absorbed. The gloves of the suit bombarded Iris's fingers with little pricks - radar information, converted into tactile input. She could feel/see something slip past her rapidly and grabbed it, still blind; with the help of the suit's abrasion-resistant material and strength augmentation, she managed to hold on to what had to be a rogue safety rope. The zero-G drills finally paid off; she managed to hold on and clip the rope into the utility harness she wore over the suit. All the while, the suit increased its pressure on her, keeping her blood going to the important parts of her body against the acceleration she was under. Something smashed against her leg, and even the suit couldn't protect her from that one - suddenly, she only felt pain from her right side, but a few seconds of that seemed to confirm that her leg was still attached. She screamed even as the helmet calmly told her that it was activating the distress beacon, and eventually she stopped, not because she wasn't in pain or not afraid, but because she knew that she was wasting air.

You never know how deep the drills stick until you use them.

It felt like minutes until the visor cleared again. Iris barely recognized the ship she was still tethered to; it drifted in the distance, torn asunder into multiple sections that were already spreading away further than she could see them. A look down at her leg showed it sitting at an angle a leg should never sit at, but again the suit did what it could and fortified her blood with a generous dose of painkillers. The material of the suit seemed worn, but not breached, and despite everything else, it looked like she'd gotten off easy.

The helmet should've told her that it was picking up other distress signals. That's what they told her in the drills. Find other survivors, huddle together, share resources.

"Suit..." she managed to say, "I need you to tell me where the other signals are."
NOT RECEIVING OTHER SIGNALS. DAMAGE TO RADIO ASSEMBLY.

One thing the piece of scrap had hit on her torso armor, the one thing, and it had to be the radio assembly. Iris felt like screaming again, just to make a point.

Why did she have to pick exogeology?

Memetastic!

2007-12-05T11:34:00.000+01:00

Going through this for Mark.

Boy or girl?

Man. I like to think that that much is obvious...

How old are you?

Ugh, don't remind me. Too old. Younger than Algernon, but the guy gets a pass for being dead a lot of the time. Me, I'm close to retirement.

What's your height?

Six feet and a couple inches. Been that way for as long as I care to remember, actually.

Are you a virgin?

Nope.

Do you have any kids?

Nope, and frankly I don't see how anyone who can't hold a gun could be safe around me. I guess I gotta adopt a teenager or something if I ever want to get that fatherly pride.

What's your favorite food?

Italian-style thin-crust pizza with a pound or two of toppings. No such thing as too much extra cheese.

What's your favorite ice-cream flavor?

Vanilla, actually. I don't like how chocolate tastes. As far as I'm concerned, anything else ain't ice-cream. Keep your cappucino-flavored abominations away from me.

Have you killed anyone?

Yeah, that's pretty much my "thing". Stopped counting.

Do you hate anyone?

I used to get an itch in my trigger finger for a lot of guys, but I guess I'm mellowing out a bit now. I can even think kinda clearly about Dennis Gray, but I owe the guy a few dozen bullets. He's going down. But hate? Nah, that's too strong a word. Just gotta do what I gotta do.

Have any secrets?

I'm just a private guy. There's a lot of things I keep to myself, so if you want to call that having secrets, then yes.

Do you love anyone?

Used to. Didn't work out.

What is your job?

I go places and do things. Usually bad places and very bad things.

Any powers or weapons?

Powers? I've got skills. I guess I'm lucky, generally, but that doesn't seem like much of a power when my co-workers read minds or wield mjolnir. I've got plenty of weapons, though. Pistols up my sleeves, a few knives and whatever else I need, and that's just what I'm carrying. You catch me in my armory, I could outfit a platoon of rambos with bullets to spare.

What do you do to relax?

I train in my off-time, but when I need to get away from the job completely, I usually go to the cinema and read a good book. People should read more books, in general. I don't know how often remembering some piece of trivia has saved my ass, and it makes for good conversation.

What do you think your life expectancy is?

All bets have been off for the last thirty years or so. Why paralyze yourself with the thought? All I know is that it's gonna be violent, and that's fine by me.

What is your opinion of the opposite sex?

I'm kinda in the modern boat, I've seen plenty of women that can keep up with me, so I try not to judge too quickly. But sometimes I can't help but get into "protect the women and children" mode, you know? I guess I can come off as patronizing. Oh, and I have no patience for the whole emancipation thing. You wanna be treated equally? Act that way. You can't just grab all the perks and still expect me to give you the special treatment. And for God's sake, don't preach. Pisses me off something fierce, that.

Now what are you going to do?

Waiting for the next call. Hoping it won't come, 'cause when I get called, things are fucked up already. I guess that's my fate, though.

Two Guns - Chapter 14 - Losing My Religion

2007-12-02T19:32:00.000+01:00

Like every waiting room ever conceived by mankind, Dollar's place didn't have comfortable seats. Sharon was slumped over a worn-out leather couch, holding a cup of hot chocolate in one hand and rubbing the tiredness from her eyes with the other. Her clothes were sticky, the tanned animal skin beneath her was hot and cold in all the wrong places, and for some reason she just wanted to walk outside and scream herself hoarse. It was mostly a matter of trying to find a solution to this whole mess that didn't include killing a hell of a lot of people. Everything she'd ignored about Mark that last week was now hitting her, in the manner of being tied to a wall in a game of dodge ball against a particularly vicious pack of 6th grade bullies. She slurped on her not-so-hot chocolate. All the cigarettes in New York City wouldn't have relaxed her.

It was time to stop pretending. Sharon Collins, your boyfriend kills people for a living. How do you feel about that?

Shuffling combat boots were barely audible through the closed door; finally, the wood groaned, the handle turned and the door opened. Mark was awake, steadying himself on a heavy cane; with careful, deliberate steps, he walked through the frame, his mouth forming the beginning of a painful grimace with every movement. All told, he looked more like a man who was acting out a few gunshot wounds rather than a guy with actual lead poisoning, but considering what Sharon knew about Mark, the man had to be tough.

"Mind giving me a shoulder?" he said, and if nothing else, his voice sounded like that of a guy with a couple too many holes in him. Sharon rushed over, ducked under his outstretched arm and helped to steady him, all without thinking about it. "Any news from Whitton?"
"I wouldn't know. I haven't checked in yet."
"We need to find Ded," Mark said. "If we're lucky, Nicky hasn't killed him yet."
"How did Nicolai make it past you?"
"That's what I called Ded for. He endorsed Nicky. The little shit must've snatched him up and forced him."
"Assuming, of course, that Ded didn't sell you guys out. He might be working with Nicolai. We don't know what the Russians are up to, and we haven't exactly tried to find out. Hands-off policy, I'm sure you're familiar with that."
"Listen, I've known Ded for years. He wouldn't do that. That's not how things work here."
"That brings me to another point. Nicolai had a gun. Didn't you frisk him?"
"You come in there, you hand over your guns, that's how the fucking meeting works. I can't just go feeling up the bosses. That's basic etiquette."
"No, it's basic stupidity," Sharon said. "At the checkpoint, the guard is God. That's how the Army does it, that's how we do it, and that's how it makes sense. But I guess that would be too much of a personal slight for your bosses, so instead you do the stupid variant, which only works as long as everyone plays fair. Nicolai knew that when he went in, and as we can see - that man doesn't play fair."

Mark stopped and looked at her. She shrugged.

"I'm a cop. I figure things out."

And thus they walked to the car in silence.

---

The Ingues manor loomed large against the first slice of the new moon; Mark left his Oldsmobile standing in the driveway and hobbled over to the house's side entrance. The inside was comfortably warm, but Mark didn't recognize the new guards. They were crawling all over the area, and Mark couldn't help but wonder who would pay for all those mercenaries. The hallways were echoing a lively discussion; he walked towards the lounge, following the voices to their origin. Aside from five more guys with guns standing guard, the large dinner table played host to Alexandra, Vincent and a large man he didn't recognize. Just then, one of those pieces of sentimental flotsam floated to the top of his consciousness - he remembered his first family dinner with Alfredo Ingues. Mark had to smile at that. It was another winter like that one now, and the first good piece he'd tasted of the Big Apple. The first night in his new home, still scared and with only Alfredo's assurances to keep him company.

Things had worked out so well for so long, Mark found it hard to get his head around the fact that the Boss was dead and buried now.

He closed in, and for the first time it seemed like Alex had really noticed him coming in; she forced a smile onto her face, got up from the table and walked over to Mark, still relying on a cane of her own.

"Looks like we can make a race down the hallway now, Mark," she said and gave him an affectionate hug. Mark winced from the discomfort, but returned it.
"Maybe later, boss. I've got some catching up to do. What's going on?"
"Well, as you can see," Alex said while helping Mark walk to the table, "we've called in a few favors. This" - she indicated the large man - "is John Done. He's new in the mercenary business, but he comes highly recommended."

Mark shook hands with John Done and inspected the man more closely. Underneath the practical clothes, Done was sporting a serious physique. Despite being a good deal younger than Mark, life hadn't done him any favors - several heavy scars marked his weathered face. Mark felt like he'd finally found a man for whom "ugly son of a bitch" would be a compliment.

"Mr. Done will be here to help us organize a response to the recent attacks," Alex continued. "He's also an experienced operator in urban combat, and I can only hope he'll be able to lift some of the 'heavy hitter' burden from you, Mark. Let's face it, you're wearing the results of our previous policies."
"I'm fine with that," Mark said. "There's a lot that needs killin' and my trigger fingers are only so quick."

Done cracked a smile at that; Mark gave him an eyebrow.

"So, what's the plan?" Mark asked Done.
"First, we scout ahead," Alex said; Done kept his lips sealed. "Find out how many men the Russians have and where they hang out. Then we look at who supports them. We take out their support, cut them off from outside help, and then we whittle them down nice and slow. Sooner or later, they're going to go all out and try their home invasion again. And that's when we suck them into a serious ambush. That done, we send in a second team to mop up before they have time to regroup."
"Why are you telling me this?" Mark said.
"Already said it once," Done said. "And she has a pretty voice."

Alex blushed a bit, but Mark frantically hoped that Done would talk again, because that couldn't be his actual voice. It couldn't be the voice of a human being. He must've misheard that, because that wasn't speaking, that was coughing up gravel and tar. Smoking all the tobacco in the world wouldn't give you a voice like that.

"That answer your question?" Done said, and Mark leaned back and nodded. That was Done's voice, and Mark understood why the man didn't talk a lot. He didn't have to.

"Where's your girlfriend?" Alex asked; Mark ripped his gaze off Done and turned to look at her.
"Let her out at the precinct. She has to report in, too."
"Yes, that's what we were worried about," she said. "We have to consider the possibility that she's a plant."

Mark had a strong answer for that, but his better judgment made him keep his voice down and lean back.

"...how?" he asked.
"She's in Whitton's unit, for example. She was where you were when Silvestro's coke deal went down..."
"I was on assignment, she was following a lead. Doesn't strike me as unusual at all."
"Okay, but remember how you had to hold her hand when you faked the evidence? She's more competent than that, we know that now."
"Sure, but we got her on the wrong foot. Everybody has an off day."
"The way I see it, it's more like she was trying to look vulnerable so Daddy would assign you as protection," Alex said, quickly raising her voice and emotional involvement. "That way, she could get close, distract you and Vincent with an attack on the hotel. She knew Silvestro would send his assassins after Daddy then. So she faked the attack..."
"That attack wasn't faked!" Mark protested. "People died that day!"
"Really? I don't see you or her buried next to my father!" Alex cried, rising from her chair. "How did she make it without a scratch while they killed my family?!"

Mark banged his fist on the table; he held back too much anger of his own. Alex froze in full swing and slowly settled back down. The silence was deafening. Mark thought about a funeral he hadn't even known about, a last goodbye forsaken for...what, exactly? His heart pumped raw guilt through his hands and head.

"This is paranoia," he said, recomposing himself.
"What about Whitton, though?" Alex threw in, eerily calm yet sullen. "He knew Nicolai, he could've arranged for all this!" she said, picking up steam again.
"Nice meeting you, Done," Mark said. Without further words, he rose from the chair, grabbed his cane and headed for the stairs.

"Come back here, Mark!" Alex said sharply, producing no result; after a second, she shouted "Simmons!" at him. He froze in place, just for a second. Then he continued on, ignoring her. As he started to climb down the stairs to the basement armory, Alex almost pursued him, but a strong hand on her shoulder held her back.

"I'll handle this," Vince said, then followed Mark.

In the eye of the storm, Done sat back and enjoyed the show. Amateurs...

---

"If you would close the door, Detective..." Whitton began, hunched on his leather-clad office chair and rubbing his temples. Sharon - badge prominently dangling from a chain around her neck - closed the door behind her, closed the blinds and grabbed the rather more spartan chair in front of Whitton's desk. She found Whitton's office comfortingly familiar - the bulletin board with nice, orderly notes about current cases, the file drawers in the back, the hotplate with the customary jug of coffee, even the rather tacky brass-plated cuckoo clock.

She sat down. Whitton opened his eyes and slowly leaned forward.

"Do you know where Simmons is?"
"Right now? He said he was headed for the Ingues family mansion."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
"Good." Whitton leaned back, and his face relaxed a little. "Do you think he'll do something stupid against the Russians?"

A little voice in Sharon's head screamed "Of course he'll do something stupid! He's Mark Simmons!", but she ignored it.

"Well, he's got a major hate-on for Nicolai" - Whitton frowned - "but he's not in fighting shape. He could barely walk when I saw him off."
"Good. We need time to sort through this mess and come to a reasonable conclusion."
"Captain, if I may..."
"Yes?"
"What do you think is a 'reasonable conclusion'?"

Whitton cracked a small grin, as if he was congratulating himself for anticipating that question.

"The one that gets the least people killed. If I can find a way to keep them from shooting up the whole city, that's what I'll go for. Protect and serve, Detective."
"I'm just asking because...back at the restaurant..." Sharon said, then trailed off for a second. "Nicolai. It looked like we were going to back Nicolai."
"I'm not friendly with him, if that's what you're going for. Dolvich called me last week, wanted to introduce me to a new business associate. He's very old-fashioned, the whole 'announce yourself in the lord's domain' thing. He wanted to make it official. So I talked to the guy, figured I'd give it some time before I pass my judgment. When we met at the restaurant, I was just trying to keep Simmons from shooting him right there. What a great idea that turned out to be..."
"Okay, but...Dolvich? The name doesn't ring a bell..."
"Boris Dolvich."
"...oh! Oh, you mean Ded."
"Yes..."
"Sorry, Captain, didn't click for a second. It's just that Mark...that Simmons keeps calling Dolvich 'Ded'. From Dedushka, which means..."
"Grandpa. Yes, I know."

Sharon suddenly felt like she'd been sent to the headmaster's office for a school prank. Get your mind on the job, girl.

"What's eating you, Sharon?" Whitton said, effortlessly slipping from boss to friend in the blink of an eye.
"I'm fine, I just...it feels like I need a vacation from the vacation."
Whitton smiled warmly. "I can see where you're coming from. You've seen a lot of things those last weeks, sights a cop could do without. I understand. You ever consider talking to a counselor about it?"
"No, I haven't actually thought about the whole situation that much. I'm just trying to keep my head above the surface, you know?"
"I back my Detectives 100%, Sharon. I've been there. Up is down and black is white, suddenly, and before you know it you're knee-deep in it."
"It sounds like a cliché when you say it that way."
"Everything's a fucking cliché until it happens to you. Look at yourself, Sharon. You're head over heels for a hitman, torn between law and justice, all the jazz."

Sharon lowered her head a bit. She was actually blushing - still in that headmaster's office.

"All I'm saying is that there's always gonna be rain, Sharon. I'm here with an umbrella, if you need me," he said, with a small paternal grin. "Get some sleep. Put your head straight, and talk to Monica if you want to. You'll see, we'll get all this behind us and then things will get better."

With a sigh, he snapped back to Captain Mode.

"That's all for now, Detective. You can leave now."
"Thank you, Captain. I'll...I'll give you a call if there are any new developments. I don't know where I'll stay..."
"Technically, you're on vacation. I don't think I have to bother you with the dreck that requires reaching you on the phone. You've got enough on your plate already. Just keep swimming, Detective."
"Thank you, Captain."
"You already said that."
"It bears repeating," she replied, with a small smile.

She turned to leave, but Whitton raised his voice again. Sharon braced herself for a parting shot.

"One last thing, though: How is Simmons?"
"I'm...not sure how to interpret that question."
"Is he a decent guy? Does he treat you right?"
"In between the bullets and the terror? Yes, actually, he's a nice guy."
"Good."
"Why did you ask?"
"If you two are going to be together, I'll have to stick my neck out for him, too. I wanted to know if he's worth it."
"Definitely," Sharon said without hesitation.
"Well, don't let me keep you any further, then. Good night."
"Night, Captain."

And so Sharon walked out, feeling curiously...unburdened. As she closed the door behind her, Whitton sat and pondered the events of the last few days. With a heavy sigh, he reached for a file folder on the edge of his desk and opened it. He wasn't going to get any sleep that night.

Two Guns - Chapter 13 - Mr. Policeman

2007-11-14T19:16:00.000+01:00

"Are you sure you're okay, Boss?" Sasha asked; Nicolai ignored him as he stalked through the hotel hallway, his bullet wounds hastily bandaged. His eyes burned with the fearless intensity of a man on way too many painkillers.

Better living through chemistry.

"Where are the guards, Sasha?" he asked, passing the last corner to their room. That was a good question, seeing how they weren't standing in front of the door.

---

"Christ, not this joint..." Mark managed to babble even while the two assistants dragged him into the basement; Sharon followed a few meters behind them, scanning the alley for more surprises. She didn't feel anywhere close to safe until they were behind a locked, steel-reinforced door. The basement had seen better times, even by backalley clinic standards - the walls were held together by a colorful assortment of unsavory movie posters, as if to impress upon the patients that their bullet wounds could be much worse. The surgical instruments were stood up in small, transparent water jugs filled with some moonshiney concoction.

But the pièce de résistance was Doctor George Washington Walker, otherwise known as Dollar. His ivory teeth shone in the darkness, his skin held the shade of a particularly bitter chocolate, and his long hair was all bound back into a ponytail, swaying like a thunderstorm in the darkest night. He looked like he had only truly lived in the 70s, then shed his velvet cocoon and tamed his afro into something marginally more practical. A blunt hung from the corner of his crooked mouth, uncomfortably like a cigarette might stick out of Sharon's.

"What'd he do this time?" Dollar said, strolling like a jaguar after a night of heavy drinking. "Sucka gets painted more often than my mama's house."
"Your mama's so fat..." Mark began, but Dollar shushed him and helped the assistants lay Mark on a table in the middle of the room.
"Aww, hell no! They did not put bullets through my everlovin' stitches! Kyla, get your ass over here!"

Sharon had held onto some small degree of respect on account of Dollar's supposed medical degree, but even that was gone the minute she laid eyes upon Kyla. As it turned out, Dollar's surgical nurse was a punk rock girl on the wrong side of 16 years, with mascara'ed eyes that promised trouble and little hands ready to deliver the same.

"'scuse me, comin' thru," Kyla said as she carried a tray of fresh surgical instruments to the operating table. Sharon realized she was standing in the way and took a few steps back until she had her back to the wall. "Ran into bullets again?"
"Get his clothes off!" Dollar said. He popped fresh gloves out of a dispenser box and wandered off to grab a surgical mask - without realizing that this would require putting the blunt down.

A small leather holster dangled from the waistband of Kyla's cargo pants, riveted to the same in lieu of conventional attachment methods; she popped it open and drew a pair of small scissors from it. Mark was too weak to put up an effective defense, so she managed to cut both his shirt and the side of his ballistic vest open with little difficulty. She couldn't help mouthing a "Woah!" as she swabbed the blood away with cotton.

"Three entries, three exits!" she called out. Dollar rushed over, grabbed the scalpel from her waiting hand and started slicing Mark's belly open. Surprisingly, Mark didn't like that. The assistants rushed over and held Mark down. Sharon circled the table and crouched down next to Mark's face.

"Look at me!" she shouted, then yanked his head around to face her. "Look at me, I'm here. I'm here. Look at me!"

Mark had no better reply than renewed screams of pain. Kyla jabbed him a syringe with a synthetic opiate into his veins, but even that was of questionable use considering Dollar's speed. By the time it hit Mark's brain and cascaded up to the "don't feel" stage, Dollar was already putting the first stitches in. Thanks for nothing, painkillers.

---

Mark laid on his side, unconscious but stable, with Sharon sitting by his side and holding his hand. She was fully prepared to wait out Mark's long sleep, as long as it might take, much in the manner of a particularly loyal (if chain-smoking) dog. However, Dollar strode in, blew marijuana smoke into her face and called her a bitch. Presumably, that last one wasn't about said dogged approach to bedside company.

"Bitch," he said, but then went on with "what are you doin'? You should be arresting this fool."
"What? Why?"
"'cause you's a cop. Cops, robbers, that shit ring a bell?"

She looked at him. Dollar understood and laughed into his next cough.

"Aw, shit. You guys playin' cops and robbers on the side, eh? So who gets the handcuffs? Or do you trade?"

Sharon fixed Dollar with a wayward glance; with no intent to her stance, she let go off Mark's hand and righted herself. Dollar suddenly realised that Detective Second Grade Sharon Collins had a few inches on him and the attitude to match. His habit of mentally undressing women and his knowledge of anatomy combined to impart an important fact even through Sharon's clothes - that woman was tensing her muscles for a brawl. Suddenly, Dollar felt inspired to add "Go far, but not too far" to his New Year's vows.

"You'll have to forgive me," she began, dropping the room temperature by several degrees, "but I don't find Mark's friends very endearing. Most of them seem to think that I'm some sort of walking target for all their little in-jokes. I get it. I'm a cop, I'm supposed to be all law & order, you are the only smart people in this city - enough already, I fucking get it. I don't agree, but I get it. You, however, you're a whole new level of jackass. The way you dress, the way you smell, the way you talk - obnoxious. In my dark moments, I want to take that big pearly smile of yours and grind it to dust against a block of concrete. Two things protect you: you saved Mark's life and I'm patient by nature. But Mark will be out of here in a few hours, and my fuse is not getting longer."
"...can I offer you something?" Dollar asked meekly. "Hot chocolate? Decaf?"

Sharon suddenly leaned back and smiled.

"Hot chocolate would be great, thank you."

Dollar hurried out of the room, intent on evacuating his vital points from Sharon's striking range. Sharon turned around and sat back down. The things you can achieve with a little civility...

---

"You've been awfully quiet," Berkovitz said, gently feeling the idling engine rumble through the gear shift. The red light didn't seem to be in a particular hurry. "About all of this, I mean," the officer went on. "It's a shitstorm alright. The best we can do is hunker down and wait for the bastards to finish each other. After that, everything will be dandy, don't you think?"

Ded didn't say anything. His mouth was covered in too much duct tape for that.

"I've known Russians all my life," Berkovitz explained. "My family's from the Ukraine, you know? My mother and my uncle got out in '67. My uncle was a fast thinker, I get that from him. You know what they call all the people who wanted to emigrate after him? Refuseniks. Refusenik. You have to game the system, Boris, I've learned that much."

The signal switched to green.

"My father was a honorable Soviet citizen. No way out for him. Too important to let go, too Jewish to make something of it. He believed the whole crap to the end. You and me, pal, we're the refuse of the cold war. War, you know? Shell casings, dead bodies, plastic packages that held food, all of that is just trash. Dead weight. We're the trash, Boris. We're the trash. So don't think I don't sympathize with you, really, I do."

They drove on in silence for a few more minutes; Ded knew where they were going. The docks loomed outside the window, barely in time for lunch break. A few twists and turns later, Berkovitz stopped the car, breathed silently, then turned off the ignition. He left the car for what seemed like a minute - not enough time for Ded to free himself, though God knows he tried. He squirmed and he struggled and he stretched for anything that might be sharp enough to cut his bonds, but it was no use. Berkovitz came back, opened the back door and hauled him out. Berkovitz was muscle, Ded thought, in the truest sense of the word - big, burly, not too bright, or at least he didn't look like he'd ever seen a college from inside.

They walked to the end of a pier; the weather was beautiful for the season, a bright sun up above and only a soft wind instead of the harsh bite one would expect from this location. Berkovitz lowered Ded onto a bollard and lit himself a cigarette; after a moment's hesitation, he took out a small, weather folding knife and cut a slot in Ded's gag, then lit a cigarette for the Russian and put it in his mouth.

"It's fucked up, Boris. You don't have to tell me, I know. You want to hear my opinion? That Nicolai kid sucks. He doesn't know what we know. He ain't seen what we've seen. They feed you this code of honor bullshit long enough, you start to shit it right back out. I'm glad for you, Boris. Glad that you got away. Glad that you had a good run. But this is where your story ends."

Berkovitz crouched down next to the Ded. Ded calmly smoked his cigarette.

"We're gonna sweep the streets, Boris. Sweep 'em clean when we've got the trash out of the hiding holes. But a little piece of shit like you" - Berkovitz grinned - "we just flush you down the toilet."

He fished a Makarov PB from his coat.

"You know those docks, right? Your place is just upstream. Makes no difference to the Hudson. This place, your place, all the same. We'll be searching for you further down. We'll find you. You'll get a decent burial. So, yeah, sorry about that. Nothing personal."

He aimed the gun at Ded's head.

"Bye."

A whisper, a word, a last beat.

And then Ded went under.

Two Guns - Chapter 12 - Silent Running

2007-10-31T17:22:00.000+01:00

Here's how it went down: Suppose you drew a line from the center of the table to Mark and called that 12 o'clock. (Because, really, that kind of finality would fit Mark.) Working from that, you would've found Whitton at 3, Alexandra at 5, Vince at 6, Nicolai at 8 and Sharon at 9.

Nobody said anything. Nobody moved. They kept on doing that.

It was a remarkable long-lived (if still violently metastable) situation for all of the five minutes it took Nicolai's friends to show up. Nicolai's friends were Russian gangsters, too - tattoos, AKs, all that. Nicolai's friends didn't have someone pointing a gun at them; indeed, when they rolled up with their panel van outside the restaurant, they went unnoticed.

Nicolai's friends were about to announce themselves.

---

Much like standing in the cabin door of a burning plane without a parachute, Sharon's predicament was not easily expressed in terms of a golden path. On one hand, compliance might have been able to get her out of this alive, but if Nicolai planned to kill her, death was certain. Fighting back would draw a lethal attack, but offered the minuscule chance of escaping it. She weighed the two alternatives - both sucked. It's hard to gamble when you don't even know the odds.

Then Nicolai's friends showed up, and she felt the gun in her neck shift slightly as Nicolai reflexively took a look. For this split second, Nicolai's friends were her friends, too - not in the sense of inviting them over to watch the Mets game and sharing a case of cold ones with them, but a more tactically expedient and cynical kind of friendship - the distracter/distractee/advantage-taker impromptu friendship triangle. Of death.

The muscles in her arms and hips tensed up, invisible under her clothing, and then she unleashed the stored potential energy by whipping around, slamming the pistol off target with her raised arms. Nicolai fired, taking off her right earlobe and inflicting considerable acoustic trauma on her right ear - call her lucky that it was a suppressed gun. Either of those would have been enough to take down a grown man, short of a dusthead on the last brightest ride of his life; she crumbled, but that left Mark with an opening to shoot Nicolai twice. That, in turn, left Nicolai's friends to return the favor, peppering the room - but mostly Mark - with fire from their AKs. Mark rushed to cover Sharon, taking Nicolai's next shot across the arm before it stopped in his vest.

But Nicolai had to start moving, which meant no more AKs firing into the restaurant. That's what saved Mark from getting his ass killed right there.

Ever ungrateful, Mark rolled around, firing a few shots at the fleeing Nicolai and the gunmen parked outside. More fire came in response; now it was Sharon's turn to have her adrenaline kick in, and she steadied Mark as they skedaddled towards the entrance. Mark retained enough strength to push Sharon towards the table with all of the checked-in guns - while he crouched behind a pillar, Sharon used the momentum to skip onto the table and tip it over for cover.

For a second, the AK gunner didn't see any targets. That made him nervous, and he had every right to be. When Mark and Sharon came back up, they gave him a four-gun 9mm salute. In the space of those four magazines, he was turned from a face only his mother could love to a face even his dentist wouldn't recognize. It was at this point that Nicolai decided to cut his losses and have the car speed off, but not before giving the assembled crowd his final (and, if it had all gone according to plan, only) fuck-you: the bottle of wine went up like a roman candle, apparently consisting of 1/2 top-quality white wine and 1/2 incendiary device. Given the Magnum bottle, that was a lot of incendiary device. (Which, by the way, differ from white wine bottles in both alcohol content and blast radius. In case of doubt or confusion, check the labels.)

Fortunately for our heroes, the room with the bottle - still standing perfectly still in the middle of the medium chaos before turning it into major chaos - was empty now, with most of the round taking cover in the kitchen. They took the rear exit when the restaurant's main room caught a thermate-fueled redecoration. Again, Mark and Sharon were forced to move until they finally hit the exit, flames roaring up behind them. Mark folded against a nearby hydrant, bleeding profusely into his shirt; Sharon crouched down to tend to his wounds, still vaguely unaware of the blood trickling down from her right ear.

"Fuck," Mark coughed up, then slid off into shock.

---

"Fuck fuck fuck!" Nicolai screamed while one of his men held him down onto the floor of their panel van. His right arm was outstretched, with his hand spasming through all the permutations of Gimme! it could muster, until he finally had a small medicine bottle with vicodin pills in his grasp. Even the child safe top didn't stand up to his adrenaline-fueled rage as he twisted the bottle open, popped a few pills into his mouth and chewed down. It took a minute to hit his brain, but then it did and through some freak miracle it didn't kill him.

Don't try this at home.

He recovered from that trip just as one of his men - Sasha - was finishing up the quick'n'dirty dressing on Nicolai's bullet wounds.

"Are you okay, boss?" Sasha asked.
"Did you get him? Did you fucking kill him?"
"Don't know, boss. He was shooting at us when we drove away."
"Fuck!" Nicolai took a deep breath, noted the pain that brought, then took another one. "Fucking Simmons."
"We're on our way to a doctor now, boss. Do you want us to go after Simmons?"
"No, no...that would be stupid. They're on their toes now. We fucked it up."
"Sorry, boss."
"We need to get rid of Boris now, consolidate our position. Sasha?"
"Boss?"
"Thanks for the fire support."
"Anytime, boss."

---

"Fuckers!" Alex snarled, kicking her shin against the glove compartment of Mark's car in a futile attempt to work through her anger. With Vince at the wheel and Sharon taking care of Mark's wounds on the backseat, they were on the move again, headed for an underground clinic - family business, one of the few advantages of being dug in those days.

"Just another bidonista asshole," Vince said. "Silvestro tried, now Little Nicky tries, they all end up dead."
"And who's gonna do that?" Alex said. "Mark can't."
"He's still alive," Sharon threw in.
"And we're doing what we can to keep it that way, Detective, but look at him. He's out of action for two weeks, maybe more."
"So?"
"So? In case you didn't notice, Mark is our insurance policy. I'd be happier than a pig in shit if we had more people with his talents, but fuck, we don't. Our rank-and-file's gone bust since Silvestro. We're fucked."
"What about you, Vince?" Sharon asked innocently.
"Somebody's gotta protect Alex. I'm tempted to go out there and string that leccacazzi up by his palle, but they'll just hit us from the flanks if I leave her. Don't 's'pose you're volounteering, either?"
"..."
"Then fuck you, puttana," Vince said, but his tone suggested more frustration than anger. "Ain't no more backup to call in for us. The Cartel's dry."
"Screw this, this sunshine and lollypop thing," Alex said. "It's getting us killed out here by everyone who's dancing around the rules. They play dirty, we play dirty. We need mercs."
"That's against..." Vince began.
"...the agreement, I know, okay? Jesus. I know. I know all those silly little rules that are supposed to keep this shithole running, but right now they're not exactly working out for us, are they, Ratioli?"
"...no."
"Fact is, we need firepower and we need it fast."
"I know a guy," Vince said after some deliberation. "Canadian ceffo, but he's good. I can give him a call."
"We'll need more than that. Call in everyone who wants a paycheck, we're breaking the bank."
"Gotcha. Do we have enough guns?"
"Does your Canadian throw them away like Mark does?"
"No."
"Then we have enough."

The car slid to a halt next to a small alley; two Columbians were already waiting there and helped Sharon extract Mark from the back seat. While they carried him away, Sharon looked to Alex.

"Don't do this," Sharon said, then took a deep breath. "I know this is bad, but they're fucking us as much as you. I know Whitton, he's gonna come down like a sack of hammers on them, just give us a little time to mobilize..."
"Feel free," Alex said. "But there won't be Russians left to fuck up when we're done. Oh, and that merc thing? That's our little secret, Detective, or I will send Vince on a housecall. I don't trust Whitton and I sure as fuck don't trust you. Stay quiet, take care of Mark, then maybe we can become girlfriends and go shopping when this shitstorm is over. Okay?"
"Okay," Sharon said, like it was not okay.

Then the car sped off. Sharon just stood there, all alone in the snow.

So much for a Cold War.

Two Guns - Chapter 11 - Russians

2007-10-14T15:00:00.001+02:00

Mark's hand slowly snaked under the pillow and pressed it against his face. Rather like starting a stubborn Fiat 500 parked in the arctic tundra, Mark's wake-up process was an exercise in frustration. His muscles tensed up in a cascade from his shoulders down to his fingers until he finally stopped fighting it and woke up. He was lying next to Sharon in a hotel bed, and found himself uncovered, with both sheets bunched around her sleeping figure. His memory of last night refused to play back, though it didn't feel like drinking - he just hadn't paid particular attention to anything except her, and he felt that this was greatly superior to the hangover and total darkness of binging on hard liquor.

Like clockwork, the phone rang just in time to ruin the quiet perfection of the sleeping girlfriend morning. Careful not to disturb Sharon, Mark reached across the bed to the nightstand, picked up the receiver and wrestled the phone cord free from a small notch in the bed's frame. He realized that he had no idea under which name he'd checked in or why the fuck he'd ordered a wake-up call, but these kind of things happen and the best you can do is roll with it.

"Yeah?" he said, not requiring a lot of acting to sound sleepy and annoyed.
"I'm calling to remind you," Vince said, "about the meeting."
"Remind me? What fucking meeting? I'm on va-ca-tion, it's all I ever wanted."
"Dude. The Russians."
"The Russians...?"
"You're not bugging out on us, are you?"
"No, I'm just...confused. How the hell did you find me?"
"Uh, Mark? I was there yesterday. You called and asked for your shit, I came by: car, clothes, guns, the whole shebang, and I told Alex you need a new cell phone. Figured I'd write down the hotel and room number..."

Mark turned around, spotting two suitcases leaning against the wall. That was stuff he really should've remembered...

"...and that would be when you told me about the Russians?"
"Quick refresher: 11. The Greek restaurant. And bring Collins, we've got the cops there, too."
"Okay, just one more question..."
"Yeah?"
"What time is it now?"
"...get dressed, Mark."

Click. Hung up, just like that. There was some recollection of a short conversation with Vince, but other than that, Mark's head was still not spun up to operating speed.

Mark reached to put the receiver back on the phone. At the moment of maximum extension, Sharon's eyes opened.

"Morning," she said.
"Hey, baby."
"You look a bit concerned."
"Oh? Nothing, it's just that I may have agreed to some work for both of us."
"May have? Some work? That doesn't sound very good."
"Ah, it's no big deal," Mark said as some memories of last night bubbled back to the surface. Oh, so it was boundless infatuation and alcohol. Thanks, episodic memory! "We're just gonna have a little talk with the Russians, they have some sort of trade dispute with us, your guys will mediate. Boring shit, but they want you and me to be there."
"Has to worry you a little bit, if 'baby' is the best you can come up with..."
"You're incorrigible."
"I'm Irish."
"Same thing."
"I only want you to actualize your full potential. Now, hit me."
"Okay, better than 'baby'...fuzzlebunny? Starshine? Your Royal Highness, Duchess of Éire?"
"Love the last one, but it sounds unwieldy."
"It's not," he insisted.
"How can you tell?"
"Only one way to test..."

With a small jump, he rolled onto the sheets that covered her, then started grinding and moaning in emulation of their late-night activities.

"Oh yes, Your Royal Highness, Duchess of Éire! Do me, Your Royal Highness, Duchess of Éire!" he cried in a faux-pornographic inflection; Sharon giggled beneath him.
"Either that is unwieldy, or you're doing it wrong..."
"I like method acting, but I may need your help with..."
"...getting into character?" she replied with a grin.
"Let's do a test drive," he said and kissed her on the neck.
"Ever the romantic.." she moaned, then pushed him a bit to the side and tried to untangle the bedsheets. "Unless you've got scissors, you're gonna need to..." she began, but he already had one of his hands reaching out for her. With a shout and a laugh, she jumped back and pushed Mark away, then descended into a fit of laughter. "You're cold! You're like a shaved yeti!"
"And whose fault is that? You owe me some warmth, Duchess!"

He pounced, but misjudged the shifting mattress, rolled right over her and off the bed before hitting the floor.

"Are you okay?" she asked, but it was hard to express concern while laughing her lungs out.
"I will be..."

And then the phone rang. Again. After struggling with himself and the floor for a few seconds, Mark finally took the receiver.

"Yes, what is it?" he barked; with Mark standing naked before her, Sharon's self-control was nowhere to be found. Almost involuntarily, she blurted out "Somebody's waking up!" and restarted her laughing fit, rolling away to escape Mark's retaliation. In response, Mark grabbed a loose pillow and chucked it at her, bonking it against her head in an unconventional display of his deadly accuracy. Sharon took the pillow in the spirit of its sender and buried her face in it, trying to muffle her laughter.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" Mark said, now somewhat less annoyed. The resigned sigh on the other end of the line could only come from Vince.
"Are you any more dressed than when I called last time?" he asked.

With Sharon rolling around without the sheets and just barely a cover on her face - surely the part of her that needed the least hiding -, they were arguably less dressed than before, in a rare display of nudistic one-upmanship. Mark idly wondered just how much less dressed they could possibly be without losing skin.

"We're getting there, but it's all Collins. You know how the girls are."
"If you'll forgive me saying so, Mark, you don't sound like you are dressed - or getting dressed."
"How can you..."
"I know you too well, obviously."
"Look, we'll be there, okay?"
"Please, Mark. All I'm asking you is to stop thinking with your johnson for two hours..."
"You didn't answer my question before."
"It's 10 now, Mark. Get a move on."
"Quiet part of town, I know the way, give us 10 minutes to get cleaned and dressed, maybe 3 to find my ride, 35 to the restaurant..."
"You're not actually thinking about what I think you're thinking about, are you?"

Mark turned to look at Sharon. The way she teasingly sprawled herself in front of him and smiled wasn't conductive to rationality. She wasn't just pushing his buttons - she had a brick on his gas pedal.

"Let's say 10 minutes," he said, addressing Sharon. She shook her head. "You can't do that," she said. "Is that a challenge, Your Royal Highness?" he gave back.
"Let me put this in terms your dick will understand," Vince said, annoyed but not necessarily unfriendly. "You get your ass and her ass here by 11. Not 11:15, not 12, not whenever you feel like it. 11."
"Yes, Daddy," Mark said. He pounded the receiver back onto the phone, ripped the phone cord out of its wall socket and made a cracking sound with his neck.

"Now, what's my nickname?" he asked.

Suffice to say, he found out.

---

In powersliding the car around the curve, Mark broke more traffic regulations than one could comfortably cite, but he had a meeting to get to on time. He drove his dark blue '70 Oldsmobile 442 like he wouldn't brake for the God Almighty himself.

"Nice car," Sharon said, but the joke was lost on Mark. "Figured you were the muscle car type." When that generated no reaction, she craned her head around to look over her shoulder. "And it has a back seat..."
"Christ, I can't even think about that right now," Mark said. "I haven't had this much sex in, well, ever. I'm gonna sprain something if I look at you."
"I wasn't going to go there, but..."
"Have you no mercy, Madam? This is some kind of aversion therapy, right? Tell me you're not going to keep this up..."
"I just think we should have as much fun as possible while we're on vacation. Like I said, enjoy the ride. Who knows what'll happen when we're back on the job?"
"I can see that, but that's exactly it - this is starting to become work."
"We usually have more time than those ten minutes, though. Maybe aromatic candles...hm, I do have a few ideas. Hanging around gangsters brings out the naughty girl in me."
"Just for a change," Mark said, "I want to take you out on a couple of dates, catch some cheesy chick flick at the movies, pretend I know what a good year for Pinot wine was...you know, some of this courtship stuff you're supposed to do before the filthy animal sex."
"But that sounds like a relationship. Do you think we're ready for that?" she said sarcastically.

Mark just chuckled to himself.

"Anyway, the Russians," he began. "Two guys. One is 'Nicky'. Nicolai Something, heavy weapons expert, he's new in town and Ded wanted him to get a taste of how things work here. Haven't met him, though."
"Uh huh."
"Ded's Russian Number Two, then. Not his real name, obviously..."
"Dedushka?"
"And every year of it, too. You ever meet him?"
"Nope."
"He's a character, that one. Ex-paratrooper, ex-vory, the only asshole in this town older and craggier than yours truly. Real name's Boris Dolvich. Grew up in the Great Patriotic War, went on to be a Light Colonel with the paratroopers, then they sacked his ass for being a contrarevolutionary in '64 or so. Wheelin' and dealin' while he was an officer, but it's not like anyone was clean there - he just got his line of Party credit cancelled, a Commissar had an easy daughter and a party with lots of vodka. To hear Ded tell it, they were on his ass before he ever got near her's, so they shipped him off to Siberia. In the camp, he buried his soldier career and went full-time gangster. He never told me how the fuck he managed to get out of there, all I know is he did the underground brotherhood of thieves thing for a few years, found out that it was the same shit in pink and crossed over. Anyway, he's been here for as long as I can remember."

The 442's dashboard clock showed 3 minutes to 11 when the car came to a screeching halt in front of a Greek restaurant; for one perfect moment, it seemed like New York City actually had an open parking space in just the right location. (And it was swiftly taken by a sex-crazed hitman. Just about figures, doesn't it?)

"Sorry for the delay," Mark bellowed, cutting off Vincent's angry tirade before he could even start; the Italian hitman briefly reconsidered his angle of attack, but Mark laid into him again before he could make a peep. "We had some breakfast," he said, and that left Vince with an opening to exploit. "Yeah, I bet she has an...appetite."

"You just go in there, okay?" Mark said to Sharon, ushering her into the restaurant and away from the conversation. As soon as she closed the door behind her, he spun around, matching Vince's cheek-to-cheek grin with a mask of desperation.
"She's fucking breaking me in, I can tell," Mark said.
"That's just the usual pussy-whipping in progress. Let me guess, you're going for a romantic dinner?"
"Yeah..."
"And you think it was your idea, too?"
"Fuck you. I get a girl and suddenly everyone else is a relationship expert?"
"I am, anyway. Good form that you're still on time, though. The bosses will be here any minute, I already got the place searched, we're good."
"Thanks, I owe you one."
"I'm just gonna put it on the tab. Oh, and your fly's open."

Instinctively, Mark's hand shot downwards, but Vince's smile betrayed that he'd been had.

"Relax," Vince said. "It's gonna be okay."

Mark had to smile despite himself. What are best friends for, if not pranks and humiliating psychological insight?

---

Nicolai 'Nicky' Danko had a gun in one hand and a phone receiver in the other. He was in a hotel room with five more guys and Ded, though the latter had the unenviable position of being bound to a chair and bleeding from a cut on his forehead.

"...see you," he said, then hung up. Idly tapping the trigger guard of his Makarov PB, he walked over to Ded and woke him up with a hearty slap to the face. Ded's eyes slowly cleared until he could be said to be conscious again; Nicolai gave him a punch to the stomach to celebrate the occasion.
"You're only good for bleeding on carpets," Nicolai said, gesturing at the trickle of saliva and crimson from the corners of Ded's mouth; the old Russian didn't reply. "And you owe us."
"Fuck you," Ded managed to say.
"How American of you. Show me those hands."

Ded's arms were fixed to the armrests of the chair; Nicolai easily grabbed Ded's right hand.

"Those tattoos, they used to mean something, no? We have the same tattoos, that makes us thieves and brothers, yes?"
"..."
"You will help us. Prove that you are loyal to the right people."

Nicky seized Ded's pinky finger; he ran the length of the tattoo on it with his free hand.

"Every tattoo is a promise, Boris."

With a sudden move, one of Nicky's henchmen forced a rolled-up sock into Boris's mouth; despite the old man's struggles, it was soon fixed with a few layers of duct tape, gagging the gangster. Nicky leaned in close and drank the look of terror from Ded's face.

"And when you break a promise" - Nicky forced the finger upwards, snapping the bone to the tune of Ded's muffled screams - "you only hurt yourself."

---

Technically, the restaurant was closed for business on Sunday. The meeting meant renting the whole thing, screening personnel and only serving authorized food. It was rather like arranging a dinner for a Senator, but the money was very good - it was hard, if not impossible, to find a restaurant worker in New York City who didn't depend on tips for their livelihood, and the top strata of gangsters thought in rolls of benjamins.

Mark was tapped as security detail, which raised his spirit somewhat by clarifying that he wouldn't have to speak about his recent actions at the table. His role was easy: greet the guests, take their weapons, shoo away the uninvited. A further advantage of this arrangement was that Mark could keep his own guns, which also contributed greatly to his peace of mind - even if he did have to stand around for the whole duration of the meeting.

Alex was the first to show up, dressed in a tasteful suit and now walking rather briskly with her new cane. She repeated some of the instructions Mark had already received, gave him his new mobile phone - "The plastic on this one is a bit harder, I think", she said with a smirk -, then handed over her SIG and took a seat. Captain Whitton and his Berkovitz goon were next, exchanging no words but providing two Glocks for Mark's checkroom arsenal. Finally, Nicky showed up, carrying a smile and a big bottle of white wine.

"Invitation only," Mark said curtly, but was outdone by Captain Whitton, who walked up to the man, loudly said "Nicolai! Welcome!" and embraced the gangster. Mark raised an eyebrow, but it was at least as good as a picture ID to him.
"Boris couldn't come," Nicky said. "But I brought a little present from him." He handed the bottle to a waiter and ordered it put on ice.
"Couldn't come, huh?" Mark replied. "Where is he?"
"Oh, he's probably sleeping now. He caught a cold."
"Too bad."

Nicky tensed to take a step forward, but Mark motioned for him to stay and dialed Ded's number. "I'll just send him some good wishes," Mark said.

---

Ded's cell phone went off; one of the Russians picked it up, then raised his pistol to Ded's skull.

"You make a good act or you die, panimaijesh?"

Ded nodded; another Russian removed the improvised gag, and the phone call was taken.

"Hello?" Ded managed to say, sounding weak and pained from the ordeal.
"Christ, Boris, you sound like shit," Mark said.
"I look like shit, too."
"What's this about a cold I hear? I got some kid here who's trying to sell me that."
"Buy it," Ded coughed. "You just tell Nikolai what you would tell me."

Boris could hear Mark lower the receiver and say "You're late, you old cocksucker!" in a friendly tone, which brought a smile to his face. A second later, the Enforcer was back on the phone.

"Alright, then. Thanks for the present."

The Russian with the gun tensed up; Ded managed to raise his head and stared the gunman straight in the eye.

"California Merlot," Ded finally said. "Horrible wine, but good for Americans."
"You Vodka gulpers have no room for that shit, comprende? Do they even have wine in Russia?"
"Do we have wine? Hah! Rara Neagra, from Moldova. Excellent red wine. In '67, I killed three Armenians to get a crate. Only thing I took with me to America. My treasure."
"Hm. No need to waste it on me, then. Well, sorry to bother you, Boris. You just lie down and get better."
"I will. Goodbye, Mark."

Hung up. The Russian gunman lowered his pistol.

"Well done, old man."

And thus Ded was gagged again, but not shot.

---

The hard part about being on guard duty in a Greek restaurant was watching everyone else eat. The initial round of drinks had long since vanished, and Mark felt bad about the empty chair that should have been Ded's - instead, the poor guy was probably barfing his lungs out, his face tinted to the same shade as the metaxa sauce on those plates. In response to that thought - the metaxa sauce, not the barfing -, Mark's stomach growled. Well, maybe they'd let him have the doggie bag - even if that was a bit below the dignity one should afford a wolf.

Alexandra tried to call a toast to their newest associate when she noticed the emptiness of her glass; in response, Nicolai graciously offered Ded's bottle.

"Gifts are meant to be used," he said, pouring into the empty wine glasses already provided for this purpose. Mark's other craving - some alcohol to take the edge off - reasserted itself. It was probably overblown to call him an alcoholic, but he definitely liked the buzz a lot. But he didn't feel too envious on that count - he'd never liked the taste of vino.

White wine...nasty shit...Ded has red wine...probably also nasty shit. Give me a beer any day.

It was at this precise moment that Mark's fringe knowledge of alcohol proved to be of advantage - even if he didn't drink wine, he'd seen it served and drunk often. Often enough to know that a Merlot shouldn't be white. And if he knew that, he had a hard time believing that Ded wouldn't. It's the little things that ruin your lies, and Mark was sure he smelled a rat.

His suspicions crystallized into action; he fixed his eyes on Nicky and took a step forward to get a better line of sight.

The lithe Russian obviously had a head for this kind of stuff; Mark noticed that he'd unconsciously decided against shooting him right there because Nicky had managed to sit at the table's side, putting Sharon between himself and Mark. With the Enforcer maneuvering himself into a better position, it was obvious enough for Nicky to notice; the wiry Russian had the split second necessary to draw his hidden Makarov PB and aim it at Sharon's head before Mark could snap his Hi-Power from the sleeve. Within three seconds, the jolly meeting turned into a Mexican standoff. Nobody said a word, until Nicolai raised his voice again.

"We do it the hard way, then."

Two Guns - Chapter 10 - Waiting for a Girl Like You

2007-09-23T22:03:00.000+02:00

The soothing azure ocean of her dreams made room for the whooshing waves in the background when Sharon came to again; the sun was shining, and when she sat up, the rays blinded her for a few seconds. A small part of her brain tried to say that a rising sun couldn't shine through the front windows if the boat was pointed west, but she was still too tired to listen to that. With a stroke, she rubbed the rheum from her eyes and looked around. She found Mark standing at the stove without a shirt, heating up a pot of water.

"No sugar on my toast," she said by way of greeting; Mark turned to face her, smiled a bit and nodded.
"I prefer 'Good morning'."
"Yeah, good morning to you."
"Thank you. Now, toast is gonna be a bit hard, but..."

Sharon tried to move her legs, which reminded her that she'd had sex last night.

"How did you clean up?" she asked.
"This" - he held up a washcloth - "and a pot of hot water. I'm warming up one for you right now."

Sharon gave him that look.

"Please tell me there's another one," she said. Mark's look swayed from her face to her uncovered breasts - don't draw attention don't draw attention ah shit she saw you move on move on dammit! - to the washcloth, and then he made a show of not looking at Sharon while he climbed the steps up into the pilot house. Sharon heard a few more footsteps outside, then a splash.

"Begone!" Mark shouted; Sharon suppressed a small giggle. When he walked back in, he saw that she still wasn't doing anything for her modesty, so he covered his eyes and carefully stepped down back into the cabin.
"This isn't easy, you know," he said, trying to find a tone that wasn't offensive.
"Don't play this game," she said, still emphatically not hiding anything. "They were perfectly fine yesterday."

Mark uncovered his eyes and looked at her.

"No entrapment here," she said. "Come on, get your fill."

He looked some more.

"Satisfied?" she asked.
"Not yet..."
"Would you prefer a different pose?" she asked, leaning to the side a bit.
"No, that's alright."

And he looked.

"I'm not trying to shut down something I approved," Sharon said with a tone of resignation, "but I wanted to demystify my body, not put it on exhibition."
"Hey, you opened that door. Also, they are still perfectly fine."

Sharon stretched out, thrust out her chest and smiled.

"...the pot's boiling over," she moaned huskily.

Like a flash, he turned and wrenched the pot off the stove, splashing his hands with some unexpectedly hot water and shaking the uncomfortable fluid off while trying not to spill the whole container all over the floor. Behind him, Sharon sunk down deeper into the bed, raised the sheet over her head and started laughing like a maniac.

"This is not funny," Mark said, turning back to her; Sharon giggled and lowered the sheet a bit, letting him see her eyes peeking out.
"Fuck yeah, it's funny. Don't you hear me laugh?"
"You dirty little..."
"What are you gonna do about it, big man?" she said, lowering the sheet to where it could show off her grin.

Without looking, Mark opened a drawer, fished out another washcloth and dipped it into the pot full of hot water. He wrung out some water, then weighed the damp cloth in his right hand.

"You brought this on yourself, you know," he said, then stepped up to the bed and climbed onto it. Sharon giggled and hid under the sheets in response, while Mark dug at the pile of fabric between them, trying to catch her.

And lo, there was much laughing, scrubbing and squealing.

---

After dressing - some, ahem, time later -, Sharon climbed up into the pilot house and surveyed their position. The boat had drifted overnight, leaving them turned away from the shore and maybe a few miles further out. Mark - now himself dressed in a Saturday Night Fever suit entirely too small for him, yet wearing it with dignity - restarted the engine and slowly brought the tender back on course, then brought the boat to speed and aimed for Sheepshead Bay to the North. He was more somber now than during his romp with Sharon, but still riding the emotional high.

"You ever been there?" she asked as she strolled up next to him, then leaned on the console and looked at the waterfront in the distance.
"Couple of years ago." He sucked in a tiny bit of spit and air, setting his teeth on his lower lip in something approaching an un-whistle in look and sound. "T'was nice."
"So," she said, then didn't continue as she fought her voice for words. "How do we handle this? Do we just...forget about it?"

Somehow, Mark felt no surprise whatsoever.

"'kay."
"No, I'm...no. I'm not saying that we should, I'm just..." She threw her head back, closed her eyes and counted to ten - in Latin, as Mark noted with faint approval. "Okay. Start over. I'm not sure how we should proceed from here. I was asking about your opinion." When he didn't answer, she added "In my charming, rhetorically stunted way."

He tried not to smile and failed. A part of him actually felt relieved.

"I don't know, either. Life's funny that way."

She returned his smile. There wasn't much to say in response.

"We have nine more days," Mark said. "Why decide anything now?"
"So we enjoy the ride," she said.
"Let's."

---

Of course, the clothing situation hadn't improved since the day before, so their first stop after dropping off the tender and a short walk on the promenade was a clothing shop. It wasn't haute couture, just rough denim and cotton suitable for a blue collar neighbourhood, but it provided Mark with an opportunity to place a phone call with Alex.

"It's quiet now," Alex reassured him. "Everybody's taken a step back, and we're working out the new ground rules."
"So you need me."
"I'm not gonna lie, I would really like for you to be here," Alex said, sounding a bit too cold for her age. "This isn't an easy time. But we've really got a chance here, you know?"
"I don't think I follow," Mark said, concerned because he usually did follow. That felt uncomfortable.
"Daddy always aimed for detente with the cops. Now we've got you - and you're the man of the hour, believe me - as liaison. This is gonna help us more than a dozen triggermen on the streets."
"This isn't political."
"No, no, of course not, and that's really great! I mean, look at it this way: if you hated her - which you don't - I'd order you to stay on her, make it look good. But you actually do like her, so it's like, win-win. Right?"
"...right. I just don't want..."
"Mark, look. It's all good. You're out there, I'm here. We both do our jobs, okay?"
"Okay," Mark said, letting his breath out. He felt the tenseness of a bad conscience slip off him. "Take care...boss."

He thought he heard Alex laugh.

"Talk to you later," he said, then hung up.

"What do you think?" Sharon asked, parading around in a fresh set of jeans, a denim jacket, flannel shirt and dockworker boots. The smell of fish pervaded Mark's nose without actually being present.
"Very...nautical. Does that chafe?"
"You're about to find out," she said with a wicked smile, then pointed to a similar getup lying folded on the counter.
"You guessed my size."
"I had your old clothes on the boat and all the time in the world to read the labels."
"Solid police work, as always," Mark replied with a smile. He reached into his pocket, slapped a few large bills onto the counter (to the apparent indifference of the craggy-faced shop owner) and went to change in a small cabin.

"We should get a car," Sharon said.
"Oh, definitely."
"And something to eat."
"Yeah."
"Oh, can we go to Coney Island?"
"Sure."
"Because I want to ride the Cyclone!"
"No problem."
"I kinda wanted to for a long time, you know."
"Uh-huh."
"But I didn't dare."
"Hm."
"I think I'm feeling bold today."
"That's great."
"Yeah, we're definitely gonna ride it. It'll be great."

He stepped out of the cabin with the new clothes. His flannel pattern was a bit darker than hers, but other than that, they were wearing basically the same outfit.

It's a wild decade, Mark concluded, then smiled. "How do I look?" he said.
"Ridiculous," Sharon said, keeping a totally straight face.

He gave her a lopsided, one-eyed glare. She just stuck out her tongue for a second and laughed, then grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the store. The shop owner waited until they were well out of the door, listened to the little bell ring when the door slowly drew closed, then took the wad of cash and started counting it.

"Half woulda done it," he said, then shrugged. "City folk," he said, to nobody in particular.

Two Guns - Chapter 9 - Invisible Touch

2007-09-19T22:11:00.000+02:00

The worst of the storm was over when the tender clipped the waves, leaving a burning soon-to-be-wreck behind in the depths of the Atlantic. Owing to its long-range applications, the tender was rather a bit bigger than the Zodiac our heroes had used on the way to the yacht, featuring a small cabin below deck and a half-open pilot house on deck. The latter was where Mark stood, trying to make it back to solid land, while Sharon perused the former to locate dry clothes. When she did walk out, Mark reduced the speed to account for the potential distraction, because no thinking and/or feeling female should ever be forced to wear a pearl-white disco suit with a flimsy silk shirt underneath.

"If you even think of the Bee Gees," she said, "I will smack you." Her dark reddish hair still hung in small clumps over her shoulders. It just refused to dry fully, though it had been downgraded from dripping wet to merely damp. "So, uh, about what Silvestro said..."
"Bullshit," Mark said emphatically.
"Yeah, I guess," she said, biting her lip. She let out a short, nervous laugh. "Probably thought he could mess with me."
"Yeah."
"Something on your mind?" she asked and saw him flinch. Truth be told, she was getting better at reading him.

"Well, I was looking for a good excuse to mention it, but...thanks."
"Okay, but what for?"
"For that crazy stunt in the pool. I don't have a clue how you came up with that, but that was a damn good way to get down quickly, break your fall and bail me out."
"That's a little too much credit," she said, smiling. "I was mostly saving myself."
"Look, you can't know this, but I don't often say 'thank you'."
"I do appreciate that...I just couldn't leave you with a, well, false impression of my motives. Or technique. By everything I know, that shouldn't have worked."
"Frankly, Sharon, all I care about is the what, not the how. So, thanks."
"You said that already."
"Guess I did."

Mark shut down the engines. There was a horrible, ghastly silence as they drifted through some winter fog.

"I don't know what to say," he admitted.
"Maybe you just don't know how to say it."
"Yes!" he exclaimed, then calmed down and blushed a tiny little bit. "Er, I mean, yes, it's more a problem of how than what."
"So what?"
"Detective...Sharon. Would you like to go out for dinner with me?"
"That was it?" she asked.

He nodded.

"It's three minutes past Midnight," she said.
"Umm..."
"...but there is a small galley down there."

She gave him a mischievous smile, and he returned it. They were drifting out of the the fog, gradually revealing the glittering lights of the coast in the distance. When it came into full view, Sharon took a look and caught her breath; Mark slipped the tattered remains of his trenchcoat off and draped them around her shoulders like a cloak.

"Enjoy the silence," Mark said. "I'll fix something."

---

The pilot house was too cold to sit comfortably, so they'd relocated to the cabin below and were now camped out on the bed, sitting in sukhasana and eating out of bowls made when Emiliano Zapata was still trying to stick it to The Man. The glittering lights of New York City were visible through the small forward view ports of the cabin, and the maritime radio was softly whispering summarily ignored weather reports.

"That's certainly something," Sharon admitted after her first taste of the rice & beans dish in front of her. The concoction was, well, hearty and wholesome, but there were a few elements to the flavor she couldn't place. "What's in it?"
"Banana and red pepper," Mark said with an earnest expression.
"Wow," she said, eating another sporkful.
"You know, stakeout food."
"I usually make noodles. You know, with tomato sauce." She smiled softly and added "Old Irish family recipe."

"Do you like it?" he finally said.
"Um-hum," she mumbled, awkwardly pulling the spork from her mouth and swallowing the latest bite. "I do."

In eating, Sharon realized how much she hadn't eaten those past few days. The dish was incredibly rich and filling, but she still managed to finish her bowl, which left her with a cozy, warm feeling when she just let herself fall back onto the bed. The boat swayed softly, as if in response, and she closed her eyes. She felt like she was floating in a warm, tropical ocean, far away from the shores of New England.

"Something nice?" Mark asked.
"Hm?"
"You're smiling."
"Something very nice," she admitted. "Do you have family, Mark?"

He stopped chewing for a second, then thought about his response.

"No."
"That must be hard on you."
"It's okay," he said. "My Dad's been gone a long time, my mother passed away a few years ago...but I hadn't spoken to her since I left. I guess Alfredo was there when I needed a father. I owe him a lot."
"Basics of criminal psychology," Sharon said as if she was reciting something. "Sharp focus on personal loyalty."
"Are you analyzing me again?"
"Yes. It's annoying me, too. Please stop being fascinating."
"Oooh, I'm fascinating?"
"I think you are."
"Well, you're not exactly boring either."
"Does that pass for high praise from you?"

Mark stowed the plates on the floor below and crawled over to Sharon.

"No, of course not. You're also daring, capable and good-looking."
"Not beautiful?"
"Not in that suit," Mark quipped. Sharon jumped up and grabbed his shoulders, rolling him onto the bed and sitting on his chest. "I've half a mind to get out of it," she said with a twinkle in her eye.
"Don't let me stop you."

She bowed down, as if to kiss him, but stopped a few inches short.

"What are we doing?" she whispered, genuinely curious rather than scared.
"I don't know, I'm making it up as I go along..." he said, closing his eyes.
"Do you have any more cliches like that?"
"You'll see, won't you?"
"...hang on," she said, then climbed off and scrambled away from the bed. Mark kept lying there while she scrambled through the various drawers in the small cupboard.

"I don't want to pressure you or anything," he said, "but you, Madam, are a goddamn tease. I didn't go into this with any unclean intentions, you know, but certain expectations have been built up..."

As if in response, he felt a little item being thrown at his chest. He opened his eyes, sat up and reached for it - a condom. He glanced to the side and saw Sharon throw the tattered trenchcoat aside.

"Get dressed," she said.
"Yes, Ma'am," he replied.

Two Guns - Chapter 8 - Ace of Spades

2007-09-15T23:29:00.000+02:00

One fucking corner. That's all they got before everything went to shit.

It wasn't their fault, they were careful, it's just that having a guy looking your way right behind the first corner was a case of excessively bad luck. Mark had his gun up and fired a single, suppressed bullet, which was bad enough, but then themerc didn't have the courtesy of going peacefully and screamed as he fell, though he was mostly dead when he hit the ground.

Needless to say, this was a rather worrying development for Mark and Sharon, for now they were two against two dozen and the entire ship was waking up around them. Mark took cover behind a bulkhead, and Sharon followed his lead across the small hallway. It was still dark, and the mercs were reacting to the scream, not the shot, so nobody had thought to switch on the exterior lights. Two mercs came down a nearby exterior staircase and hurried on, passing by the pair with nary a second look at the shadows. Sharon glanced over to Mark - he pointed upwards, and she broke cover, knowing that they had to keep moving. She hurried up the staircase while Mark followed - another merc ran up to them along the side of the deck, spotted Mark but caught a bullet in the chest before he could add another shout. Instead of crumbling down like a nice little corpse, he flailed over the yacht's railing, prompting a "Man overboard!" shout from the top (fourth) deck. The floodlights stirred in response, leaving their assigned patrol routes - and spotting a small rigid-hulled inflatable boat just outside the normal search radius, which produced a shout of "Intruder alert!"

Well, actually, only the "Intruder" part, because then the shouter caught a bullet in the neck and hit the water two seconds later. That didn't result in any more shouting, though. The following noises were much more...martial.

The decks were laid out in an compressed H shape; the walkway Mark and Sharon were on had a twin on the starboard side, both terminating into the outer walls of the superstructure before reaching the yacht's bow. In the middle of the yacht, they opened into a large atrium-esque affair, with a swimming pool on the second deck and a glass roof up there in a pavilion-like construction. At the very end, they branched back into two walkways flanking the rear superstructure. The stairway they'd used on the way up was at the terminating end of the forward superstructure, but without direct (and stealthy) access to the individual cabins, so they had to use the exterior walkway to get up to Silvestro's cabin.

Sharon had the heavier armor and the semiautomatic shotgun, so she stayed back and covered the enemy approach while Mark pressed forward, easily killing the two guards with the rest of his magazine. He dropped the empty mag into the sea below and fed the gun with a spare, then kicked the door to the main cabin open. The guards were still confused and disorganized, which counted for something, but the cabin was empty, and Mark felt like he'd been had again. However, that incident was not an example of Silvestro's fiendish intellect - the silver-haired man was simply downstairs in the game room, ruining his wrists on a particularly vicious game of Tempest. Well, not anymore, at that point he'd heard the shots and prepared for battle...but that wasn't a very positive development, either, and now Mark had to account for the fact that Silvestro could be anywhere on the yacht, potentially not even on the ship at all.

He walked out of Silvestro's cabin just as Sharon fired her first shot, blasting an approaching merc with a faceful of double-ought buck. Although she gladly let Mark take the lead in killing - after all, she reasoned, she was a cop and it was bad enough to assassinate one guy, let alone kill random people -, she felt a little less inhibition towards defending herself, and armed mercenaries charging her position definitely fell into that category.

With a few shots, Mark took out the floodlights on the starboard side of the yacht, then grabbed the rail and climbed down one deck, hoping to catch the bulk of the guards in akillzone between him and Sharon's shotgun. Again, an ill-positioned guard spoiled his plan, but this one put two bullets into Mark's vest and took the rest of the Colt's magazine out of the equation. Angrily, Mark tossed the suppressed pistol and snapped his Hi-Power twins free from their spring-loaded holsters. He was through being sneaky.

Both guns readied, he hurried toward the staircase, turned into it and emptied his magazines into the masses of mercs streaming upwards. It was simple and brutal, but in the close quarters, there was no dodging his fire. Those that could do so jumped free through the exits to the lower decks, but most of the mercs didn't stand a chance. When they finally returned fire, they were standing in the blood-soaked mess of six dead and two injured, while Mark ducked out back onto Deck 3 - and behind cover - to reload. A different hitman might have balked at the 'cheap shots', but Mark had less ego and more survival instinct than that. On the third deck, there were walls and windows flanking the atrium part instead of the top deck's simple hand rails; a window shattered from the return fire before Sharon's shotgun barked again from above.

"How are you holding up?" Mark shouted, slipping fresh magazines into his twins.
"I'm fine!" Sharon shouted back.

With the staircase secure for the moment, Mark proceeded into the atrium and drew fire like a flâneur on the battlefields of Verdun. Reflex took over; he ducked and returned fire, nailing the shooter with a group of three through the chest. The man clutched the bloody mess framed by his rips and took a dive into the swimming pool below. More contenders appeared from the rear stairwell, but Mark fed 'em well. More shots from the SPAS-15; Mark counted three before it stopped firing.

After that, things got suspiciously quiet.

Mark wanted to shout and inquire how Detective Collins was doing, but felt ill at ease doing that while someone might be listening - what with implicating her in anything. He hadn't thought to agree oncodenames - or even taken the elementary precaution of ski masks -, so he did what came naturally.

"Sharon!"
"I said, I'm fine!"
"Anybody else?"

There was a lot of silence.

"We want Silvestro. The rest of you are just in the way!"

Again, nothing. Mark reached under his coat and produced a canister of tear gas.

"Don't say I didn't warn you!" he howled, then removed the safety pin and threw it into the empty space in the middle of the atrium. The result was a resounding splash as the grenade landed in the pool. Mark rolled his eyes, crept up to the rear stairwell, readied a concussion grenade and sent it into the pool, with the result of another splash.

"Third time's the charm!" a merc shouted from below.

Then the grenade's timer ran out, the explosive charge detonated and the pool erupted into a veritable geyser.

By the time the mockingbird-cum-mercenary had recovered from the titanic spray, he had two of Mark's bullet in his belly and no more air for one-liners. Mark had slipped down the stairs in the confusion and the four guards on the second deck had a pretty serious, dressed-in-all-black problem. Of course Mark took a few bullets, including a good hit on his calf where he didn't have any armor to stop it, but underneath his clothes, that kind of injury was hard to see. For all the mercs knew, they weren't hitting Mark, which meant they aimed center mass for a "safe" shot, which was exactly what Mark wanted them to do. Still, when the slides locked back and the men were dead, Mark leaned against a bulkhead and coughed the pain out of his lungs. His coat was shredded and riddled with bullet holes, his strike plates were shattered and it was a minor miracle that the bullet in his leg had missed the femoral arteries. (As a point of interest, Mark had no idea what they were called in detail, but he knew there were a few and that getting shot in them was a Bad Thing.)

He'd just recovered from that little burst of adrenaline when the hairs at the back of his neck told him to move, and he half-jumped, half-fell forward, barely avoiding the stroke of a broadsword aimed at his head. He needed the strength of his legs to be mobile on the ground, but he couldn't risk straining his right one, so he just rolled, grabbed the rail around the pool (now reddish from the diving goon's blood) and righted himself. Mark noted that his right hand was free, then noticed a trickle of blood running down the sleeve. Half of the spring-loader (the one with the gun) was on the ground, caught on a small wire. Mark trailed the wire to its origin, leading back to the sword wielder - probablySilvestro's personal bodyguard.

"Fuck you," Mark said. Then there was more gunfire from the SPAS above.

The bodyguard was distracted. Mark wasn't.

He lunged forward, his sole gun empty but good for clubbing, and closed the distance. His fighting style didn't admit standing around and taking it; the only way to win was to push forward and unbalance the opposition. The Bodyguard wasn't as good a fighter, but he had a goddamn sword and swung it at Mark. The hitman whirled, caught the sword's edge with the still present spring-loader on his other wrist and tangled it with his trenchcoat. It was enough of a move to backhand the Bodyguard with his right arm, but not enough to disarm him. The man tore his sword free, cutting away Mark's coat and most of his equipment belts in the process. The carefully arranged mess of knives and grenades dangled from one strap while Mark was beat back to the staircase, desperately avoiding the powerful strikes.

He can't keep this up, Mark thought. But I can't, either.

Mark tried to reach for a knife, but caught the sword's pommel in the face. He tumbled down the stairs to the first deck, his bandoliers finally torn loose. He slammed into the wall halfway down, shook his head to clear it and looked up to a smiling bodyguard.

Mark smiled back and held up a safety pin.

To his credit, the Bodyguard tried to get out of the way, diving into the stairwell, but all he did was shield Mark from the fragments shooting through the air. Looking vaguely like a disturbingly transhuman porcupine, the man slammed into Mark, ramming the tip of the sword into the fake wood panelling in the vain hope of catching himself. After the customary and deeply meaningful locked glances, Mark shoved the man off. He was really hurting now, combat fatigue and most of his gear blown up. Worse, his brain was rattled, and he wasn't perfectly rational on this much adrenaline.

The question was whether this would actually improve things for the remaining mercs.

When Mark appeared on the first deck, he wielded only the sword and a maniacal grin. There was only one guard watching the stairwell, the restpresumably close to Silvestro. Like a good soldier, the man brought his sidearm up and pulled the trigger. It should've been an easy kill, since Mark wasn't making the slightest effort to dodge it, but then the gun failed to fire.

Nobody knows what Mark did to deserve this much good karma.

At this point, the guard should have done a Tap-Rack-Bang! clearing routine, pulled another gun, called for help or maybe even retreated. He didn't. Instead, he got - and this is the scientifically correct terminology -fuckin' stabbed.

But he didn't die, and so he had some screaming to do when Mark set his food against the man's chest when he pulled the sword back out. In fact, he was still screaming when Mark walked on. Oh, he was lethally wounded, make no mistake, but he refused to become unconscious. That wasn't a very good way to die.

---

As a matter of fact, not all of the remaining mercs were with Silvestro. Sharon knew this because a smoke grenade flew up the staircase, belching thick smoke all over the place. Realising the precariousness of her new situation, Sharon decided against backing towards Silvestro's cabin - a dead end - and instead retreated to the atrium. She pumped a few more shells into the smoke where the stairwell's exit had to be, and generated one scream. Still, they had cover, and they tossed a frag in her direction.

Somehow, Sharon's reflexes made her jump the safety rail.

She hit the bloodied water of the pool below just as the grenade went off and went under at once, the heavy armor and weapons dragging her down. A little gulp of air escaped her mouth, but overall she kept it together and failed to panic. The pool was crimson, but mostly on the surface where the corpse still hovered - below, she could see that the pool had windows in its sides showing the first deck.

She pumped the shotgun...

---

Mark was slowly returning to rationality, at an altogether less than optimal point in time. He had his sword to the neck of a guard, who in turn had his pistol aimed at Mark's face.

"You didn't think this through, did you? The old man's behind me. You ain't gettin' past me." the merc said.
"Hey, at least I'm trying, you know?" Mark shot back for want of a better strategy. He had a problem, namely being screwed. But that had a solution: all he had to do was stall the guy. Because when he'd started thinking again, he'd started looking to the sides again, and his backup plan was just about ready...

---

Sharon braced her legs against the frame of the pool's window and set her SPAS-15 against the heavy glass.

This is totally nuts.

---

It wasn't the buckshot that killed Mister Gun-to-Mark's-head, though that helped - but it was the high-speed jet of water that pushed him over the rail and into the icy water. In a better situation, that could have been survived, but there was no chance of rescue. It might have been a bit of a depressing thought, and so it was good that Sharon didn't share his fate - she slammed against the rail but didn't go over it, then opened her eyes and coughed up water.

"Sharon?" Mark said, softly.
"...fine," she wheezed, as if trying to work in a catch phrase.
"I'm gonna need your guns."

He reached for her shoulder holsters and grabbed the twin Berettas. She opened her eyes; water trickled down from her hair all over her face, and she breathed heavily. With an unreadable softness, Mark smiled.

"It'll be over in a minute."

He stripped off the peppered tactical vest, leaving him standing with just a t-shirt. The noise of a boat's motor echoed from the rear of the yacht; he hurried off in that direction.

---

The two last guards stood watch over the yacht's tender while Silvestro prepared to depart, and then Mark appeared. He didn't even try to trick them - he had his guns up when he closed in, waited for them to notice him and cut them both down when they tried to snap up their weapons. He wasn't in the mood to play this fancy, to do stunts or trick them. He just wanted to get this done and over with. He walked to the rear deck and found Silvestro sitting in the tender with a resigned expression. Mark noted that he'd never seen a picture of the guy, but he knew it was him. A middle-aged man with hispanic features, he favored his left leg and wore an impeccably tailored suit - yeah, that's how a cartel leader looks, Mark thought.

"It's funny, you know," Silvestro said. "The guy who helps me with the tender? You killed him first."

Mark didn't respond, but he didn't shoot, either; the only movement came from Sharon, who slowly limped up to the scene with the SPAS-15 as a crutch.

"Is that him?" Sharon asked; Mark just nodded, never taking his eyes of the drug runner.
"Why are you trying to kill me?" she said, raising the shotgun to fire.

Silvestro just smiled.

"If I tell you, will you let me go?"
"No," Mark said - before Sharon had a chance to even consider it.
"Then I won't tell you."
"Too bad," Mark added again, then raised his gun to shoot.
"Hang on," Sharon said.

Silvestro focussed his look on her.

"Call it off," she said.
"I can't call off what's already over," Silvestro said. "You've killed everyone I sent after you, killed everyone who protected me. You've won."

He just looked at her.

"What do you think this is? Some kind of bad dream, and I'm the genie who fixes everything? What I say now doesn't mean shit."
"I need you to say that I'm safe," she snarled.
"You're not safe. Not ever. You're safe from me, maybe, but don't think you can pull this shit and walk away." He shot a poisonous glance at Mark. "You're fixing nothing. The good times are over. You don't get it, do you? There's no rules anymore. I did what I could get away with. And that old fucker never knew what hit him."

Mark's finger twitched. Silvestro grinned.

"I gave them orders not to kill the girl, you know. I always wanted a daughter..."

They both shot him.

He didn't stumble and fall into the cold water, he just slumped down into the tender and stayed there, unmoving and unblinking. Sharon lowered her gun first. Not the first guy she'd killed, by far, no - but the first one she'd murdered.

"Take care of the body and launch the tender," Mark said. His face was less unreadable than usual, but still not conclusive. He grabbed the shotgun from Sharon and walked off. "I'm gonna scuttle this piece of shit."

Two Guns - Chapter 7 - Shout

2007-09-07T15:15:00.000+02:00

As far as such things turned out, the motel room didn't stay quiet for long. Sharon wondered idly how that could be.

"Prometo mi vida," Mark said, with something panging against his otherwise pretty decent non-accent. He kissed Alexandra's hand and slowly rose from his knee, keeping his head down while she drew in a few small sobs and finally recomposed herself.

"Okay," she said, wiping a small wetness - not a tear! - from the corner of her eye. She cracked a small, desperate grin. "Some cartel we have, eh?"
"We've still got our men out on assignment," Vince said, leaning against the wall and watching the entrance. "We can..."
"Hang on a second," Alex said. "Should she be hearing this?"

Sharon got up from the bed, grabbed her jacket and started to walk, but Mark held her back.

"No, I need to hear this," he said. "And she's with me."

Alex folded her arms and put on a fake pout. Sharon sat back down and opened her suitcase.

"You did just swear allegiance to me, right?"
"Your father gave the order to protect her - boss."
"...why do you always make me feel like a little girl?" she said, and her pout turned into a half-smile.
"Force of habit," Mark conceded. "Now, what's our plan?"
"We can't keep sitting around," Vince threw in. "So far, their plan has been to strike at any vulnerable point they can find. They clearly don't care about losses or noise as long as they get the job done."
"Suggestions?" Alex said.
"We hit 'em where it hurts," Mark said. "Where's Silvestro now?"
"If I had to guess, I'd place him at his yacht. He's usually a couple of miles out, the whole international waters deal. I saw the blueprints in Bogota, that thing is a swimming fortress."
"Difficult," Mark conceded.
"We're too short to do anything," Vince said. "I have to protect Alex, you have to watch the Detective."

In the following silence, the sound of a magazine being slammed home was like distant thunder. Mark turned around to see Sharon reload her Berettas - from the suitcase.

"The difference bein'," she said, "that I'm in fighting shape."
"Where'd you get the ammo?"

Sharon gave him a 'How stupid do you think I am?' look. "I don't need four fucking minutes to grab my suitcase. I figured I'd scavenge a bit."

For once, Mark had no effective reply. Sharon slammed another mag home, then slung a double shoulder-holster over her sweater, filled the pouches with magazines and holstered the two guns. Vince grinned.

"She's your speed," he said.
"Quiet, you," Mark shot back.

---

In the end, Mark managed to divorce Sharon from the impression that the scavenging had been strictly necessary - without, of course, leaving her to think that he didn't appreciate her initiative. However, he explained, a criminal syndicate that makes most of its proceeds from gunrunning can accumulate a far greater variety of small arms than what could be carried in a suitcase.

"How many weapons?" Sharon asked.

Mark showed her. Right there and then, she lost any faith whatsoever in the principles of gun control.

---

The sea was too calm for winter, especially with the snow falling around them, but the Zodiac pushed on, gliding through the water with only the bleating of its engine disturbing the peace. Mark was at the controls, trying to navigate by compass without a view of the shore, and it was okay for him and Sharon - after all, they didn't know how stupidly dangerous that was.

Sharon slipped a few more shells into her SPAS-15 magazines, eyeing the prototype weapon with some suspicion. For a cop with a steady marriage to a good old tube-magazine pump-action, a semi-auto shottie with a box magazine just didn't feel right. Despite the cold, she was sweating under the heavy drysuit and amphibious assault gear she'd slipped into, and she rather suspected that Mark had taken a few seconds longer than strictly necessary to fit the right armored floatation vest for her. She couldn't decide whether that was cute or creepy.

In the distance, searchlights pierced the darkness, delineating the silhouette of the yacht. There were a few men on deck, and the yacht dwarfed them. Sharon felt like she'd slipped into a James Bond movie.

"Your pack ready?" Mark asked; she nodded wordlessly and zipped it up, then strapped it to her back. Mark killed the engine; then they both put on their goggles and slipped into the water.

The Atlantic gets cold in winter.

Sharon swam for the light, because that's what Mark had said she should do, and he was right next to her. Short, measured strokes, no hasty moves or big gestures. The floatation vest was uncomfortable, but necessary, both helping her stay on the surface and keeping her body warm. But she had to swim - the vest wasn't rated to keep her afloat without help, and until that moment, she hadn't understood just why.

Then the searchlight swiveled around, heading for her like it knew she was out there, and she knew she couldn't swim away fast enough to dodge it. She struggled, looked for Mark but couldn't find him, nearly screamed when she felt something tug on her and finally went under.

The Atlantic gets very cold in winter.

It bit her face, and she had to fight multiple instincts, like closing her eyes, trying to breathe and struggling to reach the surface. She forced her eyes open, spotting the beam of light passing over her - and Mark below her, dragging her with him. After a second of shock, she started to swim with him, heading for that vague gray mass ahead. Just when she thought she couldn't hold her breath any longer, Mark dragged her further. She couldn't, she thought, every stroke increasing the pressure on her lungs, her eyes watering from the effort, but some dumb stubborn instinct kept her mouth closed. With a start, Mark beat his feet, dragging her upward again.

They broke the surface, producing a large gasp from Sharon that Mark stifled at once with a hand over her mouth. She was almost ready to panic, but his breath rushed past her ears and she felt his heartbeat, even through the heavy layers of protective material between them. A beam of light rushed past them, lingered for a moment, then moved on. Neither of them made a sound.

Steady.

The next thing she knew, Mark grabbed her arm and pushed it upward, letting her reach the anchor chain. He dove again, then grabbed the chain below so she could put her feet on his shoulders. He came up, she pushed herself skyward and grabbed a new chain segment. With the initial boost behind her, she shook off the apathy and wrapped her legs around the chain properly, then scaled it. She was cold and miserable, but by God, she'd make it. A few seconds later, she hit the deck above, then scuttled off to a dark corner, diving knife at the ready. Mark followed a few seconds later, then took over the guard position while Sharon got rid of the swimming gear and changed out of the wet clothes into her combat suit.

"Damn cold water," Mark said, betraying no indecent looks but with a mischievous smile that was still visible in the semi-dark. For a second, Sharon was angry at him, but when she saw him with his knife held close to his torso in a surprise attack stance, she remembered a little song she'd heard her father sing once:

Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear,
And he shows them pearly white
Just a jack-knife has MacHeath dear
And he keeps it out of sight.

After a minute, the roles switched again; now Mark got dressed while Sharon stood watch, wearing a black overall, body armor and more guns than, perhaps, strictly necessary. The SPAS-15 hung from a sling, a trump card to be played when her suppressed Colt - one of Mark's spares - ran out of usefulness. Behind her, the telltale clicking of springs being torqued echoed, far too loud for Sharon's sensitive ears. When Mark strolled up beside her, he was wearing his trenchcoat.

Why, of course.

He flashed his knife - no, wait, another knife, Sharon realized.

"How many of those do you have?" she asked.
"Enough," Mark replied with a smile.

They snuck off, starting their mission to kill Silvestro in earnest. Just the two of them versus a super yacht full of mercenaries.

Piece of cake.

Two Guns - Chapter 6 - Comfortably Numb

2007-08-26T22:26:00.000+02:00

"...I said, are. you. okay?" Mark shouted at Sharon, who slowly lowered her Berettas; the thump of shoes on roofing echoed behind her as Vince switched buildings with a short jump.
"I'm fine," she said. "I'm fine."
"Jesus fucking Christ," he said.
"A little warning," Vince said, shouldering the Dragunov; his white shirt was roughed up beneath the light kevlar vest. "That's all I ask."
"I thought I could take them," Mark replied with an apologetic frown.
"Oh, no doubt, that was some Grade-A killing, seriously impressive. But it won't do ya any good if the principal gets snuffed."
"Hey!" Sharon offered, pocketing the guns. "I happen to be fucking present."

Mark seethed for a second, then released the breath he'd been holding.

"Okay, enough of that. We have to leave, fast."
"I need my suitcase," Sharon said. "All my stuff is in there."
"No."
"...including my gun."
"You just took two guns."
"My official issue Glock? The gun you didn't want me to use, presumably because you didn't want CSI to find it?"
"Have to give her that one," Vince admitted.
"You go back to Alex," Mark offered, "we'll figure something out."
"You could just come to the mansion with me."
"I said, we'll figure something out." A tense look darted back and forth between the two hitmen until Vince relented with a smile, shook his head and just walked away. Mark favored Sharon with a glance; she gave him a half-hearted smile.

"Four minutes," he said.

---

Despite appearances, Mark didn't take her to Manhattan. Well, technically, he did, but they didn't stop on the island. The little GLC puttered along, just another car in the start of afternoon traffic on the George Washington Bridge.

"We're going to Jersey?" Sharon asked.
"Maybe," Mark answered.
"I knew you were..." they both began; Mark's eyes rapidly darted back to the road ahead as he suppressed the beginning of a smile. "...gonna say that," Sharon concluded.

She reached into her jacket, retrieved her pack of smokes and a book of matches, then lit up. The window on her side was half down, and the passing air sucked the smoke outside.

---

Vincent's hand cradled the gear shift for a moment before he shifted down to second gear, taking a curve not as slowly as he might've otherwise.

Silvestro was nuts, he concluded. Full-on insane, totally out of it. The man had lost more people this week then the Ingues Cartel had in the last five years, and this rate of attrition meant he was bleeding money. He couldn't be that stupid, could he? Vince knew what Detective Collins had seen, and it wasn't worth this much effort. Heck, if anything, what she knew could sink his cartel, and all Silvestro was doing was driving her into their arms. It didn't begin to make sense.

Well, at least not until he stood before the mansion's automatic gate, the Ferrari's engine idling with more attitude than healthy, and wondered why nobody opened it. He was a smart gangster, and like any smart gangster in this situation, he didn't honk. He just killed the engine, grabbed his gun case and hopped out, hurrying to get into the mansion and find out what was wrong.

He suspected, of course. The attacks hadn't been about Collins, or Mark.

They had been about him.

---

Sitting on the hood of her car, Sharon smoked a cigarette and reflected on the last days. It was snowing, and even though her watch said that it was the still solidly day, the cloudy sky didn't betray anything other than a weak impression of sunlight. She wondered if that was symbolic in a way, when the sun would shine on her again, but then dismissed the thought with another drag. She was antsy and altogether not well, the kind of funk that leaves you with the impression that sitting on the hood of your car in winter is a good idea. It was like she'd switched off some part of her brain to cope with people trying to kill her - not just in an abstract, "get rid of that cop who's after you" style, but trying to murder her specifically. The car - and by extension, Sharon - were stranded at a snowed-in parking lot for a motel, and Mark had left her here to guard the car while he tried to negotiate for a room, which didn't strike her as a sound protection policy but left her with little opportunity to complain. Her right hand cradled the Beretta under her jacket, and unlike Lennon she found that a warm (well, lukewarm) gun didn't elevate her mood greatly.

Then he walked back to the car from the office, and she noticed how vulnerable he looked. In the heavy snow, he was just another guy stuck in bad weather, trying to navigate the half-frozen dirty sludge at his feet without ruining his pants. His face didn't show emotions often - at least not in the few days she'd known him -, but he looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"We got a problem," he said as he drew close, his hands buried in his trenchcoat and his shoulders bunched up to protect his neck.
They've only got one room, Sharon thought, with a double bed. How stupid do you think I am?
"They've got a few free rooms," he continued, "but none right next to each other."
"Oh," Sharon said, and meant That's a marginally more plausible pick-up line.
"There's another one thirty minutes out, we'll try that."

Sharon reactivated her brain and tried to untangle the mess. On the surface, it looked like the "one room" plan had been rejected by implication, but she couldn't be sure. The weary way he'd suggested another motel made her think that he was trying to guilt-trip her into staying here. Then again, maybe she was distrusting him for no good reason; he'd consistently backed-off whenever she'd implied he was interested in her. And yet, maybe that was a shell game, too...

It all came down to whether she trusted him or not.

"I'm tired. Let's just take a room here."
"Oh?"
"You get the couch."

He said "Okay", and it was so infuriatingly hard to read his expression through the cold, the snow and his own talent for subterfuge; it became impossible when he walked off again, intent on paying for a room. Had he tricked her after all? Was this just the kind of reasonable agreement it looked like? Or had she just talked him into something; worse, did he believe she was coming on to him?

...was she coming on to him?

Why did nothing make sense anymore?

---

Vince snuck through the house, his CZ 85 at the ready. The gun in his hands was new, yet to be tested in combat - and truth be told, Vince wasn't looking forward to changing that, because he was the kind of guy who found pistol work distasteful. Why chance the vagaries of close-quarter combat when a sniper rifle offered so much more reach and armor-penetration? Still, the gun was comfortably heavy and solid in his hands, something to rely on.

Dickens was dead, leaking his guts all over the heavy-duty wool carpet in the living room. The mansion was in a part of town where gunshots would draw the wrong kind of attention, so they'd probably come in using suppressed guns. He briefly considered firing his own gun to generate a police reaction, but for all he knew, that could also alert some assassins who'd stayed behind to deal with him.

It's kind of unnerving to slice the pie around the corner to your bathroom, but that's what Vince did. He was a professional, first and foremost, and the whole sentimental stuff could wait. He wasn't quite charmed with the close-range prowess of Mark, and that made him a bit nervous.

Another body - Sam. The redheaded manservant of 57 had been killed by two bullets to the throat, and he didn't deserve that. But these days, it seemed to Vince that he was the only one with enough discretion to restrict his killing to the actual scumbags. You could always find a hatchet man on the street, coked-up tweens with Uzis who'd waste their own mother for a grand, but Vince was older than that. Old enough to think that honor was a good thing, that there were certain things that you just didn't do. Maybe that was why he and Mark were friends: if you believe in the laws of the underworld, you might get cozy with the man who enforces them.

And what about Alexandra? Vince pressed on, followed bloody footsteps to Alfredo's office. He froze when he heard voices.

"Shoot him!" one bellowed; only quiet sobbing followed.
Alexandra, Vince thought and gripped his gun tighter. She's still alive.
"He told you to shoot him!" another voice shouted. Vince moved closer to the door, trying to aurally locate his targets.
"Ah, what's the matter, sweetie? He's as good as dead already."
"Silvestro wants you alive, girl. I don't want to disappoint him."
"No, but he trusts us."
"Yeah, he does."
"So we can do whatever the fuck we want, and it'll all be necessary to bring you in alive."
"Not because we hate girls or something."
"Nah, if you were his son...we'd fuck you up, too. You'd be surprised."
"Tons of shit you can do to someone and leave them able to talk."
"But I guess Daddy told you all about it..."
"...too bad he's having a stroke. Why don't you start thinking about what you can do for yourself?"
"Nothing you can do for your old man..."

It happened very fast. Vince kicked the door, one guy tried to grab Alexandra but couldn't because she ducked, Vince fired twice into the other guy and killed him dead - because that's what Vince did best -, the first killer had a bead on Vince, who hadn't moved, but then Alexandra had her gun to his head and blew his goddamn brains all over the place with a single wet BLAM!

Vince saw the slide on Alexandra's pistol locked back - one bullet. There were no more tears, just a cool and collected voice from the blood-splattered teenager.

"Daddy needs an ambulance."