Two Guns - Parting Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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.