9 – New Orleans Is Sinking
Shan wondered how long he could sit here before he could think up an excuse to bust in on Z.

She’d hate him for it, but damn it, he just could never reconcile the difference between who she appeared to be and who she actually was. She looked like a kind of average to slightly small woman; in reality, she was more gonzo and hard core violent than any hockey player he had ever met. It was hard to reconcile the two things. His head knew she didn’t need his help ever, but his head was basically broken, so he could expect no help from it at all. But that worked in his favor, right? She’d probably forgive him. He could blame a ton of shit on his brain injury.

Shan was searching his pockets for gum when he glanced up and realized the guy currently getting out of a cab in front of the hotel looked familiar. He quickly glanced at the print out Z had left him, and saw that it was the guy that Z inexplicably called Six. On the drive here, she told him Six was called that because his last name was phonetically close to the German word for six, but Shan wasn’t sure that made sense. It could, but not so much. Didn’t mean it wasn’t true, though; life was strange, and Z was stranger than that. Shan sighed, as he knew he had to go get him; storming in on Z would have to wait until later. Damn it.

He waited until the guy had entered the hotel before getting out and following. He followed Z’s instructions perfectly, because he was good at that.

He stayed out of earshot, stayed away from Six, and then realized he had no actual plan. He had Z’s guidelines, but she left him room to improvise. Crap.

Well, he knew what his room number was, right? He knew what floor he was on. Six got into an elevator and Shan got in too, not sure what his plan was. It turned out he and Six were alone in the mirrored elevator, and Shan felt big next to the guy; he was at least five inches taller, and maybe fifty pounds heavier. But he was a big boy; he wouldn’t be a bouncer if he was smaller than your average bear. He could overpower the guy without much trouble. But Z had emphasized, “Always assume a gun. With these morons, always assume they have a Smith and Wesson stashed somewhere, because more than half the time you’ll be right.” And while attacking him in the elevator might be ideal – really confined space; even if he had a gun, he could only shoot him – he couldn’t lug an unconscious body around. It was a little too early to go with the falling down drunk excuse, even in Canada.

He caught Six’s eyes in the mirrored walls, and as he wondered if he’d been made (what a cool phrase – did that ever actually apply to him? Did you have to actually be someone before you could get “made”?) he slapped on a big stupid smile, and went with a guise that had never ever failed him: dumb ass American tourist. “You in for the conference?” Shan had no idea if there was a conference, but it was a hotel. It was one of those bets where the odds heavily favored you.

Six’s cold eyes narrowed slightly. He had really thin eyebrows, almost like they’d been burned off at one point and he just glued these tiny strips of felt to his face. “No.”

“Ooh, accent! Where you from, buddy? I’m from Michigan myself. Ever been to Michigan?” Part of the reason this guise was easy was because he was just parroting his Uncle Stan, a good natured chatterbox who was never exactly a Mensa candidate at the best of times. As if to prove that point, while drunkenly hunting deer one winter, he accidentally shot and killed himself when he dropped his rifle and it went off, and the bullet ricocheted and hit him in the stomach, severing a vital artery. It was discovered he’d also left his headlights on in his truck, and the battery was dead by the time his body was found. It seemed like insult to injury.

Six’s gaze was much eviler, and he looked away, shoulders hunching in a way that suggested he wanted the stupid American to go away and leave him alone. “No.”

“You oughta go! We got lotsa lakes. You like fishing? I love it, but ya know, Vancouver ain’t so good for it. A buddy of mine was up here last year, and he said the place was lousy with trout, but I gotta say, place seems kinda dead to me. I think Phil was just yankin’ my chain.” Shan elbowed him, sending him stumbling towards the wall. “Oh, sorry bud. You okay?”

Six straightened the collar of his jacket and gave him a dirty look to compliment the perfect “fuck you” vibe he was giving off like steam. If you were blind, deaf, dumb, and brain damaged, you’d still get that he wanted you to leave him the fuck alone. Shan just gave him a big Uncle Stan smile, wishing he could give off an odor of cheap bourbon like Stan did. “Fine,” Six spat like poison, before turning and exiting. He barely let the elevator doors finish opening before he slipped out. Shan waited until the doors were completely open before he followed the guy out. “Hey, you on this floor too?” Shan boomed, sounding like the world’s happiest idiot. “I’m in room 321. What’re you in?”

Six cringed but made no effort to respond. If Shan were him, he’d probably be considering shooting the stupid bastard, damn the consequences. But Shan kept his distance, allowing Six to disappear around a bend in the corridor, and he waited until he heard the noise of a door accepting an electronic key and unlocking. Only then did Shan come around the corner, and see the back of Six’s nondescript coat disappearing into a room. The door was closing, but Shan got a hand on it and shoved it all the way open, startling Six and making him stumble into his room. “What the hell -”

“Hey, we haven’t been properly introduced,” Shan said, shutting the door behind him. “My name’s Shane Shanahan, and we have a mutual friend.”

He saw it; that instant of recognition, the sudden dawning that the big stupid idiot might not be a complete idiot after all. Six did something smart – he started backing up, reaching for something under his coat, but Shan could thank all his hockey training for the fact that he might be a big, lumbering oaf, but all his trainers made sure to teach him how to move fast, much faster than you’d think a big man like him would be capable of. He tackled Six, and they both hit the bed and rolled over it, Shan grabbing his arm and forcing it away, keeping him from going for whatever he was trying to grab.

They rolled off the bed and hit the floor, Six struggling to get free, driving knees into his crotch and midsection, attempting a head butt but failing, as he was beneath Shan and he saw it coming. The crotch hits hurt, but not as much as they probably would have had he not been wearing his cup. Come on – you go into a game, you gotta suit up.

Six realized it at some point, as he stopped trying to knee him, but he was now cursing at him in what was probably German – like Shan knew; French cursing he knew, but German was new to him – and finally stopped and said in English, “If you knew what she really was, you wouldn’t be helping her.”

“I know she’s Australian,” he said, wondering what the best way to knock this guy out would be. Could he reach that lamp?

He shouldn’t have talked to him at all. He got distracted. “She’s an assassin,” he said, getting his foot up into his gut and kicking him off of him. But he didn’t get as much strength on it as he should have; Shan stumbled back but controlled it, so as Six grabbed his gun and started rolling up to his feet, Shan was back on him, grabbing the gun and twisting it in his hand as he drove his knee down solidly into his chest. Shan got the gun away, but the guy suddenly slapped at him with his other hand. Shan ducked it and backed away, but as he did, he felt water dripping from his face. No, not water – blood.

Silver glinted in Six’s hand; it was a tiny blade, triangle shaped and wrapped with electrical or hockey tape at the bottom, the widest point, giving him something to hold onto. “Drop it or I shoot you in the fucking leg,” Shan ordered, all too aware of how dangerous a blade could be.

Years of hockey had taught him if a blade was sharp enough, a cut didn’t hurt; you could get a wicked slice and not even know it until after the fact. It also taught him there was an artery in the face, but he was sure Six missed it, because the blood wasn’t spurting, it was dripping. He’d seen guys with accidentally sliced arteries, and they sprayed like something out of a bad horror film. He started to feel an ache in his cheek, and figured that’s where he was bleeding from.

Six studied him, pale eyes glittering like wet crystals, and Shan wondered if that’s what crazy really looked like. Not the guy wearing underwear on the outside of his pants and four coats on an eighty degree day, ranting about how the aliens were sabotaging the cheese supply and trying to make everyone speak Swahili, but the guy who seemed to show no fear while looking down the barrel of his own gun, trying to figure out if he could throw the knife before the guy holding him could pull the trigger. There were degrees of crazy, and Shan imagined that Six’s mind was a hatbox full of rabid sewer rats. “Are you a killer, Shane? Really?”

He took aim at his thigh. “I won’t kill you. I’ll just cripple you. Drop the fucking knife!”

His eyes, hot and bright and just a fuckload of crazy, bored into his, and Shan tensed on the trigger. He was going to shoot the guy just to make him stop looking at him. But Six must have guessed his intent, because he let the sliver of a blade drop from his fingers and hit the carpet. “You know, as soon as you’re of no use to her, she’ll kill you too. She’s good at killing. That’s why the Brits took her even though she was an Aussie slag. She can kill anyone with anything.”

“You like to hear yourself talk, don’t you Colonel Klink?” Quickly, without telegraphing it, he snap kicked Six in the face, hoping that would knock him out, or at least stun him. But even though he slammed back hard into the nightstand, his lip bleeding from the contact, he was conscious enough to complain, “Son of a bitch! What was that -”

Shan turned the gun around so he had the butt out, and smashed Six on the head. It took two hits to knock him out, and even then he wasn’t sure he wasn’t just stunned into silence. It always looked so easy in the movies.

He heard a clunk, the door unlocking and opening, and he swung the gun around just in time to see Z come in. She had a bloody lip and what looked like the beginning of a black eye, but she seemed okay otherwise. “How’s it going here? Fuck, he cut you?”

“Yeah. He had a knife thingy, but I didn’t see it until I took his gun from him.”

“Yeah, he’s a slippery bastard.” She came over and took a good look at the cut, grimacing slightly. “Didn’t cut all the way through, did it?”

He felt the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “Don’t think so. How bad is it?”

“It looks very manly. You’ll get laid for sure.”

“Awesome. You look like yours went down with a fight.”

She clicked her tongue as she pulled out her cell phone. “Mercenary types only go down with a fight. They’re testosterone poisoned like that.” She put the phone to her ear, and said, “We’re at the hotel and it’s done. Send in the teams.” Shan though he heard the distant sound of a female voice, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Z gave no facial or vocal clues. If it wasn’t for the bruises on her face, she could have been ordering a pizza. “Oswald has been neutralized. Six is alive and awaiting transport to a heavily guarded facility.” There was a pause, more distant female voice. “Neutralized means neutralized, Chen, as in no longer a threat to anyone in the first or third world. Now get the teams in here before the RCMP gets involved.” She hung up and put her phone back in her pocket, even though Shan was sure he still heard the woman talking.

He looked at her, and asked, “Why did you specify Six was alive?”

“Because we could have killed him. Mission parameters allowed for death. We coulda picked ‘em off with sniper rifles if we ever got a clear shot.”

“Ah.” Suddenly, he didn’t want to know what neutralized meant. He really, really didn’t.

3 – Gravity Rides Everything

Even through the codeine, his head was starting to throb again, and he was starting to see small, dark flashes, pinpricks of negative light floating somewhere behind his eyeballs. Full blown migraine; even codeine and alcohol were sometimes helpless in the tide of pain.

Roan went straight from Holden’s apartment to the emergency health care clinic he went to when he absolutely had to go somewhere. He knew a good deal of the staff from his cop days, and as a general rule of experience, he liked the emergency clinic doctors much better than other doctors. They never seemed to get freaked out by anything, and they were models of kind efficiency; they got you in, assessed you, got you out. The check in nurse, a stout middle aged woman with sensibly cut silver hair and a brightly flowered scrub top, looked over her desk and said, “Hello Roan. Migraine?”

“I’m too predictable,” he admitted. “How are you doing, Kelly?”

“Can’t complain. Take a seat, I’ll get you in as soon as I can.”

It wasn’t crowded, maybe because it was still fairly early yet and the weather was so shitty. He slumped in one of the lobby chairs, head back and eyes closed, until a perky young Japanese nurse he’d never seen before summoned him back. At the weigh in station, she asked if he’d had any “symptoms” – she was referring to his infection status, not his migraines. He was able to tell her no, because the ability to transform out of viral sequence wasn’t a symptom of a health decline in any medical journal.

He wasn’t surprised his blood pressure was low, and told her he’d taken some painkillers in a fruitless attempt to circumvent the migraine. When she asked what, he fudged, telling her Tylenol codeine. Close enough.

While waiting for the doctor to show, he dozed lightly in one of the chairs, the sick throbbing of his head not allowing him anything but the lightest stage of pre-sleep. Sometimes, with the bad attacks, there were few medications he could take to shut the pain off; even if he took a handful of heavy duty shit. It was like his brain was an infected wound, swollen and near bursting with pus. Which was a disgusting idea, but it felt even worse.

The doctor turned out to be one of the newer ones, a petite woman younger than him, who also had shorter hair than him. She was exceedingly kind, noting that his chart was full of references to migraines and cluster headaches, and filled with medications used and discarded. Like most, she asked when he had his last head CT. They kept looking for brain tumors, and they had yet to find one, although it was once noted aneurysm could also be a possibility. Fun.

There were new meds out, which didn’t surprise him considering the sheer amount of pharmaceutical ads, and she gave him a shot of the meds in his hip while he had to loiter in the room for a good fifteen minutes, just to make sure he didn’t have any side effect reactions (he’d had a bad reaction to one of the first migraine meds he was ever given, and this was a chemical cousin). His head hurt so much he didn’t even feel the needle; he had considered trying to overwhelm the pain in his head, distract his pain receptors by, say, slamming his own hand in a car door, but that didn’t work. He’d tried, though; he tried almost everything you could name, short of a brain transplant.

He was okay. The pain was starting to ebb, and while he felt slightly dizzy and hollow, that was how migraine meds usually left him feeling. It was preferable to the alternative. The doctor gave him some samples of the medication in pill form, mainly because his health insurance didn’t cover this particular medication (! Ha! Road trip to Canada was in order, it seemed …) and she advised him to see his GP as soon as possible. She didn’t like that his migraine attacks seemed to be increasing in frequency, and he hadn’t had a brain scan in over a year. The fact that he was an infected seemed to make this more dire in her opinion, and he knew why: as infecteds went, he was elderly; he’d lived too long with the disease without physically breaking down. She probably thought this was his sign, the first sign of his rapid decline that would end with his death within six months. Sometimes he wished that was true.

He knew the meds were really working when he became ravenously hungry while driving to the office. Because he had an insane craving – the meds, or just him? – he pulled into the lot of the first Baskin Robbins he came to and got a Jamoca almond fudge ice cream cone. The kid working behind the counter gave him a funny look, but Roan didn’t care. It was the breakfast of champions, damn it. He felt light headed and giddy, not really high on meds more than high on the lack of pain; you forgot how nice it was to live without it sometimes.

He arrived at the office just as Fiona was hanging up the phone. “Where you been, bitch?” she asked. It was a running joke between them now, the pointless addition of the word “bitch” at the end of sentences and questions. They didn’t do it around clients, as someone might take them seriously, but they thought it was hilarious.

“Stopped at the doctor’s, bitch.”

She sighed heavily, and fixed him with a stern look. Today she was wearing her crimson dominatrix hair extensions, but she combined them with her honey colored contact lenses that made her eyes look almost yellow, like a wolf’s. It was startling, especially when combined with a black pleather vest worn as a shirt, such as now. She looked like she got lost on her way to the biker bar. But Roan imposed no dress code, except she at least look semi-professional, and never wore her dominatrix gear during work hours (which was cool with her, because she didn’t like to wear it except when she was on a “gig”). “Is it your migraines again? Man, you need to see a specialist.”

“There are migraine specialists?”

“I assume. Isn’t there a specialist for everything? They got butt doctors. Why not head doctors?”

“I don’t need a brain surgeon. Yet. Give me a minute.”

“Don’t smart ass me, mister.”

He decided not to remind her who was the boss around here, and simply asked, “Any messages?”

She gave him a look that suggested he was going to pay for this, and let out a martyr’s sigh before consulting a piece of paper on her desk. “Detective Sikorksi called, and said he wanted you to call him back. Dylan called and said he’d be at the Serrano Gallery this afternoon and would love it if you stopped by, and James Bellamy called with another excuse about why he’s been late on payment.”

“Bellamy,” Roan sighed, waving his hand in a dismissing manner. He was a weasel who wanted him to get “dirt” on his soon to be ex wife, but was unwilling to pay for it. So until he coughed up the dough, he wasn’t giving him shit. Then he asked, “Serrano Gallery? Like the peppers?”

Fiona nodded, her crimson hair moving up and down. “Yeah, it’s a place that specifically focuses on Latino artists, but I always thought it sounded more like a restaurant. And I keep forgetting Dylan’s Latino. I don’t know why; he has that total hot Latino guy look going on.”

“Back off, sister – he doesn’t bat for your team.”

“Don’t I know it, bitch. You hot guys all seem to be gay. Where’s my hot straight guy, damn it?”

“Did you include me in the hot guys statement?”

She glared at him. “Well, duh. You are a hot guy. Don’t fish for compliments.”

“I wasn’t!” He wasn’t. He wasn’t sure how he looked. When he looked in the mirror, he either saw his scars, or he saw too much of the cat in his face and had to look away quickly. He tried not to glance in mirrors too often, only when he absolutely had to.

“Oh sure,” she replied teasingly, but before she could dig the hole deeper, he was saved by the phone. Once she answered it, he ducked into his office and closed the door. There was a bowl of fresh gorp on his desk, indicating Doctor Braunbeck had stopped by at some point. He was glad he missed him.

Once he settled and shoved the gorp into his garbage can – sorry, but he really didn’t like the stuff, and he had no idea why Braunbeck could never accept that some people didn’t like it – he called Gordo back, but got routed straight to his call messaging system, which told him he had his cell phone switched off: he was either at a scene, or at a meeting. So he left a terse message to call him back. Damn it, if he had more on the crime scene, he wanted to hear it.

So with time on his hands, he called a person he hadn’t talked to in a while, Jay Bhaskar. He was a medical examiner – read coroner – for the county office, and while very straight (he had three kids and two pissed off ex wives to prove it), he was the most gossipy, nosy person Roan had ever met outside of a hair salon. He’d been known to flash polaroids of particularly grisly or inexplicable finds in corpses at Christmas parties, which Roan knew could get him fired if anyone higher up ever found out about it. But Jay had on his side a very self-deprecating sense of humor (he described himself as the “dumpy Gandhi – you know, the one who found nirvana in a double cheeseburger“), and a very generous nature. If you needed ten bucks, help moving, or a kidney, he was the guy you called. Roan didn’t need anything so dramatic.

When he answered, Roan heard the hollow echo of a speaker phone. “Bhaskar.”

“Hey Jay, it’s Roan McKichan.”

“Roan! You old gay bastard! How ya doin’, Batman?”

He sighed wearily and slumped back in his chair. “Don’t you start.”

“Oh come on! I saw those security tapes, man. Ain’t no way a normal human without years of training could pull off those stunts.”

“How do you know I haven’t been training?”

Jay snorted a laugh that trailed off into a snicker. “Training as which, a gymnast or a long jumper? Hey, I know – ninja training. You’re a ninja now, aren’t you?”

It was nice to have friends, but it also could be a tremendous pain in the ass. He decided to get right to the point. “Jay, I need you to look into something for me.”

“I assume it’s a corpse.”

Roan heard a faint metallic clink, like something being tossed onto a metal tray. “Are you doing an autopsy right now?”

“Yeah, but a very basic one. I’m just confirming a death by natural causes, and boy, was it ever. Your body’s probably a temple, ninja Batman, but this guy used his as a garbage dump. His arteries are so clogged I couldn’t get a needle through them.”

Roan winced at both the mental image, and the possibility that ninja would now be added to his name calling list. “Do you know if Joel Newberry is on the docket?”

“Newberry? Holy shit, now there’s one guy I’d love to slice and dice. The stories I’ve heard about him …”

“Such as?”

“Oh, the usual decadent rich guy stuff: sex parties, orgies, all night coke binges and losing half a million dollars at the blackjack table in Vegas. You know, the routine.”

“Stuff that someone could have pulled from a Jackie Collins novel.”

“Right. But I bet at least some of it is true.”

“Can you find out? I mean, at least through his autopsy report -”

“Are you fucking kidding me, man? That stuff’s locked down tighter than a nun’s snatch. The Newberry’s are trying to keep this stuff as hush hush as possible.”

Roan wished he was surprised, but he wasn’t. “Why?”

“Because … well, he’s rich, they’re rich, they’re local celebrities. That’s all the reason they need.”

“Is that good enough for you?”

There was a long pause, and another clink of a metal instrument hitting a metal tray. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? You’re trying to manipulate me into breaking the law and giving you details that maybe three people in the world could possibly be interested in. Why the interest in Newberry, Ro?”

“I’ve been hired to look into his death by a close friend of his, who doesn’t believe his death was accidental.”

Another pause, but shorter than the first. “Really?” Jay now sounded interested. That was all he needed to do, pique his curiosity. Once, when he was very drunk at one of those Christmas parties, Jay had admitted to him that he always had this secret fantasy about being Quincy, a mystery solving coroner. He ate this mystery stuff up on a plate. “I’ll sniff around, but … I can’t promise anything. And if I find anything, it stays between us and my name never comes up, got it?”

“You can count on me, Jay.”

“I’d hope so, you being Batman and all.”

If he wasn’t doing a favor for him, he’d have slammed the receiver down repeatedly on the desk. But when someone was doing you a favor, you couldn’t pull shit like that, not without being seen as the world’s biggest asshole. But the next time someone called him Batman, he was going to scream.

After ending the phone call with Jay, it struck him that he felt too light headed; dizzy almost. The world seemed to have a slight tilt to its axis, and he thought he might start floating if he didn’t hang on to the edge of the desk. Okay, the absence of pain was nice, but sometimes these side effects could be a real bitch.

He pushed his chair away and laid down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Which needed cleaning, something he hadn’t realized before. There was a big ass cobweb in the near corner, which he had never seen before. Some detective he was. Also, his carpet was pretty flat, he probably needed to get it replaced before it became threadbare. Well, assuming he got the money to do such a thing; the economic downturn was hitting him as well as other people. Only Holden seemed immune, but then again, when you sold sex, you were probably bulletproof.

He was wondering if he was falling asleep when his phone rang, and rather than get up to answer it, he grabbed the phone cord and yanked it down to the floor. The receiver tumbled off the cradle when landing, so Roan scooped it up and answered, “MK Investigations.”

“Hey, you know someone named Miranda Kim, don’t you?” Gordo said, with no preamble. He had his gruff “just the facts ma’am” voice on, which set off alarm bells in his head.

“Randi? Yeah, she’s a friend. Why?”

“We got the IDs of the three people last known to be living at the house on Madison Court,” he reported. “Curtis Bowles, Tiffany Jones, and Grant Kim.”

Roan felt his gut twist, although the meds he was on were so good it registered as little more than a twinge. Grant Kim? Wasn’t that the name of Randi’s brother?

Oh fuck no. He hoped it was another Grant Kim, but somehow he doubted it.

8 – All Come True

Besides the ka-bar, she was carrying another weapon: the electronic equivalent of a skeleton key. Only the manager was supposed to have it, but hey, it was a brave new world, was it not? Who was to say she couldn’t be the manager?

Okay, so she was as likely to be a manager as a room service tray. But this was all theoretical. No one who looked at her had paid a single bit of attention to her: she was a woman with short hair and a loose, drab wardrobe, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. She wasn’t particularly attractive, startling, or memorable. She might as well have been wallpaper.

All part of the plan, of course. She was nobody, and no one ever remembered a nobody.

The hall was empty as she approached, and she hoped that it stayed that way. She was hoping she could ambush him in his room, as that would cut down on witnesses and possible collateral damage. Not that she’d kill any idiots who stumbled into their fight scene, but Oswald might. You could never tell with those gung ho mercenary types.

She made it to his room door and slipped the card in the lock. The lock released and the red idiot light turned green, so she pushed the door open and went inside. She didn’t see him or hear any sign that he was here … until she heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. Yeah, even soldiers needed to piss now and again.

She hurried up and planted herself against the wall in the main living area, just beyond the bathroom. She didn’t know if he’d heard her or not, but he didn’t charge out, which was a good sign. He cleared his throat and she heard him zipping up his pants – didn’t he wash his hands? Eww – as he started into the living room.

She’d already judged his height, so she simply swung her fist, and hit him straight in the throat.

That should have killed him (not immediately, but within two minutes; after getting your windpipe crushed, that’s pretty much all she wrote), but either she missed the windpipe or he had a thicker neck than she thought, because while he gagged on the initial hit, he still had the strength and presence of mind to grab her arm. She figured he might be going for a break, so she quickly slammed a flattened palm in his face, and as he tried to grab her other arm, she planted a solid kick in his midsection, breaking his grip as he slammed hard against the wall. Even though his face was turning red and he hadn’t recovered, he was a pro, and lunged forward, spinning into a kick that she blocked with a kick of her own. Impact hurt enough that she was sure she got an ugly bruise, but none of that was in the forefront of her mind as he threw a punch that she blocked, yet he still got a hold of her arm and slung her across the room, where she turned her head in time to avoid hitting the wall face first. He was good – he knew he was stronger than her, so he’d try and use that strength against her. She’d hardly hit the wall when she turned away, and Oswald ended up burying his leg ankle deep in the drywall when his kick missed.

Perfect.

Even though she was winded, she instantly brought her elbow down on his kneecap, bending it the opposite way with a loud pop. He made a strangled noise of pain, but also backhanded her across the face, sending her slamming back into the wall. It was a stunning blow, she could taste the blood on her throbbing lower lip, but she didn’t give into it. You ignored pain until you couldn’t, as a moment of weakness could be death in a fight.

He pulled his leg out of the wall and made strangled noises of pain, and from the way he was balanced it must have hurt like a motherfucker; it wouldn’t hold him at all. Now she had the edge. “So you’re Zero, huh?” he grunted. “You shoulda stayed locked in the trunk.”

She simply pursed her lips and blew him a sarcastic kiss, all the response she was willing to give him. She was here to fight, not chat.

There was a funny moment where nothing happened – he was waiting for her to commit to a move, and she didn’t – but then he lunged for her. She understood instinctively it was a feint, a clumsy move she was supposed to step into, but she didn’t; she held back and let him come on, blocking a weak throat punch and spinning away from the real hit, one aimed towards the solar plexus. As she spun back around, she slammed an elbow into his kidneys and kicked his bad leg out from under him.

But Oswald was a killer mercenary for a good reason. Even falling, he grabbed her leg and pulled her down. He tried to throw her into the dresser, but she curled up into a sitting position, still hitting the dresser but taking the brunt of it on her back instead of her head, and drove a thumb right into his eyeball. No, it wasn’t pretty, but she wanted Six to find a messy corpse – she wanted him to know how fucked he was before she made it permanent.

He shouted inarticulately, grabbing her arm and ripping her hand away as he kicked her away, throwing her into the desk. The edge of it hit the window so hard she heard a small, glacial crack. “Fucking bitch,” Oswald snarled, finally losing it. This fight was over; whoever got emotional first lost, and he should have known that. The deadliest killers weren’t the ones who were the angry; they were the ones who honestly didn’t give a shit. “Fight like a man.”

He lunged for her again, this time on his knees, but he did surprise her by grabbing the wastebasket and hitting her with it, the metal clanging up against her skull, as he followed through with a rabbit punch that neatly snapped one of her ribs, a sudden shock of pain that never failed to leave her momentarily breathless.

He was on top of her, trying to pin her down with his weight, and grabbed one of her wrists and twisted it. “Fucking cunt, you don’t mess with me and live,” he spat into her face, spittle making his lower lip slick and wet. She could see his eyes were bloodshot beneath the lower lids, thread thin tendrils of red snaking beneath the orbital bones.

She had slipped the ka-bar out with her left hand, and raised it before quickly bringing it down hard on the back of his neck. The shock of it widened his eyes and coaxed an involuntary wet noise out of him as she felt his muscles stiffen. Although it was impossible to tell from this angle, she was pretty sure she had stabbed him between vertebrae C1 and C2 – almost total paralysis. He was trying to breathe, he was trying very hard, but saliva was now drooling out his mouth, and his eyeballs looked to be straining from their sockets. She could see the bloodshot vein tattoos perfectly now.

She let go of the knife (it was perfectly safe where it was), and squirmed out from beneath him, doing her best to ignore the sharp pains coming from her broken rib. “So you’re the big bad killer, huh? I bet you usually did it with a gun. Guns make people stupid. You should have known that, Bradford. Any fuck can wield an AK-47. It takes real talent to paralyze someone with a single stab wound.”

She frisked him, finding his wallet full of fake IDs and some credit cards, some of which matched the IDs and some that didn’t, as he lay face down on the carpet, choking pitifully as blood and saliva made a small pool on the sandy beige carpet. She found a small gun in an ankle holster, but it was little more than a pea shooter, only good for close quarters and precision targeting. His other guns were probably elsewhere in the room. “Shoulda went for this right away instead of getting sucked into that mano a mano combat bullshit. You see, us female agents, we know we ain’t gonna overpower you, so we use cunning. Ever heard of that? What a stupid question. Obviously you haven’t. I mean, look at you.”

Maybe he was trying to say something; he was making noises. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand and figured he was near the point of passing out, so she knelt down and grabbed the knife handle, and shifted it ever so slightly. “Consider this karma, Oswald. You should have never left Eritrea.” She shifted the knife around with deliberate clumsiness before sinking it in deep and ripping it out one side of his neck. Blood spilled out, but by the time she had gotten through the bones and tore the skin, the spray wasn’t arterial. Somewhere between the beginning and this end, he had died. She hoped he felt enough of it. Because he was a murderous fuck, and he probably deserved worse than this.

But, no matter now. One down, one to go.