Tina wasn’t sure if the building her handler had sent her to was an apartment or a hotel. It looked like a run-down apartment but signs said “nightly rates”. The manager downstairs had taken her crumpled cash from behind metal bars and tossed her a key with a numbered tag on it without a word.
The walls of the halls and stairwell were painted a gross old green, except where they weren’t. She walked past a bathroom with an out-of-order sign on its open door on her way to her room, which didn’t have a bathroom in it, just a sink, a gas stove that wasn’t attached to anything, and a bed she wouldn’t touch for a hundred thousand dollars and a ticket to France.
There was no air conditioning and the room was stuffy as hell, so she opened the window. It was a bit chilly outside, but she had her jacket and she sure as hell wasn’t taking it off since that would require setting it down somewhere.
She tried calling her handler to find out how long she’d have to stay in that place, but the woman wasn’t answering. She never ate before she did a job… that cut down on the chance that she’d throw up in the middle of it. Starving now, she tried ordering pizza or Chinese food, but couldn’t find anywhere that would deliver to her. Finally, she went downstairs and timidly asked the manager if he knew anywhere good to eat nearby.
“No,” he said, not looking up from the battered soft core-looking sci-fi book he was reading.
She put her hood up over her hat and headed out into the street. There was some kind of a taco place and some kind of Indian or Pakistani place. She liked the look of the former a lot less than the latter, but she didn’t think she could eat curry or whatever the hell they’d have at the other one. After staring went to a little store on the corner and bought some chips and beef jerky and a bottle of iced tea.
This would never happen in France, she thought. Suck it up… before I know it, I’m going to be eating bon bons and baguettes and shit and taking walks along the Rhine.
The guy inside the cage looked like he’d fallen asleep when she got back, which she didn’t mind at all because she didn’t have to feel his creepy bugs upon her as she walked past. Upstairs, her room was freezing… she thought she’d closed the window before she went downstairs, but apparently she hadn’t. She went over to close it.
“Surprise,” a voice whispered right from behind her just as two pairs of fingers speared into her back, near her shoulders.
Her arms went rigid and numb. She wobbled forward, and without her arms to balance or catch herself, she thought she was going to pitch forward and fall out the window. She managed to twist and throw herself to the side instead. She wound up on her back. She could move her hands a little, but her arms were useless dead weights beside her.
“You,” Tina said, looking up at the woman she’d shot. She was now wearing a yellow domino mask with a hooked bird’s beak covering her nose.
“Me,” Diana said.
“I shot you,” she said.
“Guess you missed,” Diana said.
“I don’t miss,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Then I guess you did shoot me,” Diana said. “What do you suppose I should about that?”
“Listen, I have money,” Tina said.
“No, you don’t,” Diana said. “I was listening to your conversation. You don’t have jack. Not that it would matter if you did, but it doesn’t make me very happy to know that you’re lying to me.”
“It’s there, it’s just in transference or something,” Tina said. “It’s a hundred grand.”
Diana looked down at her, her eyes bugging out behind her mask.
“You’re shitting me,” she said.
“No, no!” Tina said. “A hundred thousand dollars. You can have half.”
“You are seriously shitting me,” Diana said.
“Okay, okay, you can have all!”
“You took out the Poisoned Dragons for one hundred thousand dollars?” Diana said.
“I’m worth it,” Tina said. “You have to have to pay for quality, and that’s me… Bulletina.”
“Yeah, I heard the name,” Diana said. “Kid… you got hosed.”
“What?”
“This is why we have child labor laws in this country,” Diana said, throwing up her hands. “A hundred thousand? I can promise you, for a deal like that, somebody… probably the snooty bitch on the phone with you… is making millions.”
“No, she only gets ten percent of what I make,” Tina said. “I’m the talent.”
“So you only get ninety thousand?”
“No, her part is, I don’t know what it’s called… fully absorbed? By the guy who’s paying us,” Tina said.
“Bad guys don’t do that,” Diana said.
“Shows how much you know,” Tina said. “All our deals have worked like that. They pay her my fee plus ten percent, she keeps her part and has mine forwarded to my bank account.”
“How would you know if she was keeping more than that?”
“We work out how much we’re going to ask the guys for before we take a job,” Tina said. “I mean, doy.”
“And then you both sit down and give the client that number?”
“No, she handles all that, just like she handles the money,” Tina said. “It’s better that way, legally, because it keeps my hands clean.”
“Your hands clean? Tina, you’re a murderer,” Diana said. “You’re a mass murderer.”
“No!”
“Count the bodies,” Diana said. “And that’s just one job. She’s not protecting you, she’s protecting herself. If she gets nabbed… somehow, despite being safely a million miles away… she can turn you over to the feds, and you’d better believe 4B would have a use for you. If you get nabbed, which is much more likely, you can’t turn around and rat on her.”
“I wouldn’t,” Tina said. “And neither would she. Look, you got me, so go ahead and gloat. Mess with my mind a little if it makes you feel like a big damn hero. But you don’t know shit about me, or how I work. She works for me.”
“Is that a fact?”
“She does stuff for me. If I want clothes or something she gets it to me.She books my flights and hotels… nicer ones than this, usually… and sends cars to pick me up and stuff, and she picks it up all up herself.”
“Out of her ten percent?” Diana said. “Bad guys don’t do that, Tina. Good guys don’t do that. A personal assistant doesn’t book luxury hotels out of her own pocket. She’s spoiling you to keep you stupid, to make you think you’re living the high life.”
“I am living the high life,” Tina said. “I’m going to France.”
Diana rolled her eyes.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “Well, nowhere nice. Well, maybe nicer than this. You know, I came here to kill you, Tina.”
“What? You can’t… you’re a…”
“Hero? Yeah, kind of. And you’re a mass murderer,” Diana said. “In fact, you murdered me. I don’t have a lot of experience in that area, but that doesn’t seem like the sort of thing one should forgive. But now that we’ve got to talking, I don’t think I’m going to do that. I don’t even think I’m going to have you arrested.”
“Are you serious?”
“Well, that’s the other reason I was going to kill you,” the martial artist said. “Because someone like you… young, stupid, and deadly… wouldn’t end up in jail. You’d end up in a training program. Like I said, 4B would have a use for you. You’d still be a tool, just in someone else’s hands. I don’t see that as a very productive change. So here’s what we’re going to do… you’re going to tell me everybody you’ve ever killed. No exceptions. I’ll know if you lie. I’ll know if you omit. I can live with you killing a bunch of Poisoned Dragons. If there’s anybody on the list I can’t live with, well… no sense being melodramatic about it, but you won’t live, either. If there isn’t, you get the hell out of the country and figure out what the fuck you’re doing with your life. But first…”
She stooped down and rolled up one of the girl’s sleeves. Underneath it was a big titanium wristband, like a watchband but without a watch. Instead, there were a pair of octagonal metal boxes set on opposite sides of it. Diana undid the clasp and held it up to her face. Inscribed on the top plate of one of the boxes was an insignia, the Greek letter phi with the initials PHI written diagonally across it.
“Phineas Hammer International,” Diana said. “The Technologist strikes again… I knew you didn’t have freaky aiming powers and freaky gun teleportation ones.”
Diana removed the other wristband, placed them on the windowsill, studied them for a few seconds, stacked them on top of each other, and then struck a lightning-fast blow. It didn’t dent the titanium casing, but a few seconds later, both devices imploded in a shower of green sparks.
“Hey, I need those!” Tina said.
“Not if you’re not going to be shooting anyone,” Diana said, pocketing the twisted remains of the devices.
“But if I don’t have guns, I’m not Bulletina,” the girl protested.
“That’s a good thing,” Diana said. She looked at the bed, and then sat down on the floor next to the girl. “Now, it’s time for you to make like a canary and start to sing.”
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