SLFA - The Appointment

Following on from the previous entry, here's another chapter from Talija's career.  The first one, in fact, which rather oddly is actually the end of her career (or is it?!?  Yes, yes it is.)  This chapter was inspired by watching a number of movies in which an assassin/killer of some description, who had been firmly established as being the very best in the business, would turn their back on their career, only for their clearly not very intelligent boss to then sic a load of considerably less competent assassins on their tail, with predictable results.  Anyone who works as a contract killer would, it stands to reason, need to be meticulous at planning ahead, and anyone who they worked for would no doubt be fully aware of their assassin's skill, so the whole plot of those kinda movies really irked me.  Anyway, enough rambling, this is the result.  As with other stories in the "So Long, Farewell, Adieu..." arc, it's a single-scene story.

So Long, Farewell, Adieu...

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A S/Sgt. Janer Tale

Chapter 1 – The Appointment

“So... what is it that you want to speak to me about?” He seemed every bit the perfect businessman – from his simple and tidy flat-top hair, a touch of grey at the temples, to his charcoal grey pinstripe morning suit and diamond studded cufflinks.  Konrad Herczeg was a man who looked more than capable of overseeing a hostile takeover in the morning, laying off five thousand employees in the afternoon, divorcing his terminally ill wife in the evening and then still sleeping peacefully that night.  Right now, however, he was more scared than he could ever recall being.  He’d faced men with guns, knives and lengths of two-by-four before now, run guns through Soviet-controlled lands and always felt less afraid than he did sitting behind his desk and talking to the pleasant-looking and relaxed young lady who was resting her gloved hands on the back of the chair across from him.  Not that he was showing it, of course.  No, to the outward observer he was calm, composed and fully in control of the situation.  Maybe the line of sweat trickling down past his left ear was the fault of the irksome air-conditioning in the building and perhaps the faint, barely noticeable throbbing at his temples and throat were due to a brisk jog up the several flights of stairs to his lushly furnished office.  Looking even more relaxed and apparently not bothered by any air-conditioning issues, the office’s other occupant smiled in a warm, pleasant and vaguely terrifying manner.  To Konrad it seemed too much like the last sight an unfortunate wanderer might see in the Indian jungles as three hundred pounds of orange and black striped death leapt towards them.

“My resignation and retirement, Mr. Herczeg.  After much deliberation and consideration I’ve decided to hand my notice in, with immediate effect.” Her teeth retreated behind her lips as the smile faded and the jeans, t-shirt and plain black leather jacket clad woman lightly placed a brushed aluminium attaché case on Herczeg’s vast and paperwork-free desk.  The suited businessman tried very hard not to flinch and nearly succeeded. “In here are my company expenses card, the keys to my Manhattan apartment and also my company car keys.  You’ll also find fifty thousand dollars in cash as compensation for early severance of my contract.  If the fee seems too small then I’m open to negotiation.  Lastly, there’s a signed statement by myself proclaiming that I am fully retiring from the profession and will not be taking on any contract work with competitors.”  Herczeg looked to the case, pale blues eyes slowly moving over its clasps and handle before returning to his ex-employee.  He’d have his assistant open it later.  Or rather, his new assistant, after he promoted one.

“I see.  You could have just made an appointment so see me, you know.  And why, pray tell, did you feel you had to kill two of my bodyguards and my secretary to tell me this, Ms. Janer?”  She looked back over her shoulder, half-turning to regard the three slowly cooling corpses that lay sprawled on the thick, expensive and now-ruined carpet of Herczeg’s office.  One guard appeared to be attempting to look at his own shoulder-blade; his neck at an angle that explained his transition from is to was.  The other guard and a smartly-dressed woman in her mid-forties lay nearby, each with a pair of very precisely placed bullet-holes puncturing their tops and their life’s essence leaking out onto the floor in a sluggishly spreading crimson puddle.  Their killer shrugged apologetically and spoke as if she’d stapled the wrong documents together or forgotten to refill the coffee pot.

“You normally have three bodyguards with you at all times and I didn’t have time to check if the bulge in her jacket was just a PDA.  The guards were a statement.” Her tone was almost reproachful, as if somehow the change in arrangements had made it Herczeg’s fault that he was now lacking a secretary and his ex-secretary was lacking a pulse.  An errant strand of dark brown hair was tucked back behind her ear as she resumed leaning on the 19^th century mahogany and mother-of-pearl inlaid chair in front of her, much to her host’s dissatisfaction.

“I... see.  And this statement, would it be along the lines of “Fuck with me and I’ll kill you”?” Enquired Herczeg, as he steepled his manicured fingers and leant forwards in his chair, composure still on a knife-edge.  Janer grinned broadly, again triggering the primitive lizard part of her former employer’s brain.

“I wouldn’t put it quite so crudely, Mr. Herczeg, but something along those lines, certainly.  I want to retire to somewhere warm and sunny with a private beach and I know what the firm’s usual view on retiring hitmen is.  We’re both aware of how many of my former colleagues I’ve helped with their ‘retirement’ plans, and we’re both aware of my impeccable record and finesse in the field.  So this is me, saying to you that if you leave me in peace then I will return the courtesy.  If, on the other hand, you take it into your head to send someone along with the intent of making my retirement rather more final, then I will kill them.  After that, I will kill you, your guards, your staff, your family, your friends and anyone else who suffers the misfortune of being there at the time.  You know how much care and thought I put into even the easiest of contracts.  Consider that my retirement plans are something I have spent the past few years preparing.  I don’t make threats but I do make promises and on this one you have my word.  Yes, Mr. Herczeg, fuck with me and I will kill you.  Oh, just so you know, I severed the phoneline at the exchange and the briefcase has an IR-emitter connected to half a pound of plastique, which should be activating about... now.” The Hungarian froze perfectly still, save for his eyes, which flicked down to look at the suddenly deadly briefcase before him.  “The timer will switch it off in a little less than fifteen minutes but if you move between now and then your office will get re-decorated.  With you.  There’s a twenty millimetre threshold on the receiver so do try not to cough, sneeze or breathe too heavily.  Goodbye, Konrad.  Be good and we’ll never meet again.” She flashed another grin before giving a jaunty wave to the stock-still Herczeg and turned to exit his office, stepping daintily around the puddles of blood on the carpet and the bodies that lay in them as she walked to the door and vanished from his life.  Well, if he had any sense, that is.

SLFA - There Ain't No Justice

What follows is one of a series of short stories (very short - they're basically single scene stories) revolving around v2.0 of my oldest RP/writing character, an assassin by the name of Talija.  As someone who's often RPed an assassin character, and who usually plays them in RPG video games, I get hacked off at the stereotypical and hackneyed way they're often portrayed in comics and movies.  The "So Long, Farewell, Adieu..." series is partly my attempt to scratch that frustrating itch and address some of the idiotic portrayals, and also just me having fun writing single-scene stories about Talija.  As the title suggests, there are at least four other entries detailing parts of her career, which I intend to publish here at some point.  Anyway, enjoy :3

So Long, Farewell, Adieu...

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A S/Sgt. Janer Tale

Chapter 5 – There Ain't No Justice

                "Mr Hernandez?  Mr Ernesto Javier Hernandez Ibarra?"

                "Wh-Who the fuck are you?!  What are you doing in my office?!  Where's my-" The somewhat short, balding, and overweight fellow bellowing the demands slapped a hand down on the intercom buzzer on his desk, "Janice!  Janice!  Where the hell is Miquel?"

                "Janice is peacefully asleep, Mr Hernandez, slumped over her desk and, for now, blissfully unaware that we are having this conversation.  She'll have a stinking headache when she wakes up but I rather think that's a lot better than the alternative options I had at my disposal.  Speaking of which, Miquel will not be joining us."  Her tone was even, her manner polite, her stance relaxed.  None of this served to help Mr Hernandez relax.  Maybe that she was sitting in his desk chair with a semi-automatic pistol laid on the desk before her had something to do with this.  But then, Ernesto looked like a guy who was pretty stressed and agitated at the best of times.

                 "You killed Miquel?" He stopped looking desperately around the room and focused entirely on the well-dressed woman seated in his expensive, genuine leather desk chair.  If she'd killed Miquel, then that probably meant she wasn't anything to do with that rat-fuck Jimmy.   Jimmy's goons never hurt Ernesto's employees, just Ernesto himself.  And Miquel knew that getting in the way of Jimmy's boys was a suicide move.  Ernesto didn't begrudge him his self-preservation - he hired the muscly dumb-fuck to look imposing and, primarily, to drive him places, not to take a bullet for him.

                "No, I rather think gravity and the concrete beneath your lobby's balcony window did that.  I just gave him the impetus.  But I'm not here to talk about the late Miquel, or about the sleeping beauty outside your office door.  I'm here, and talking to you, because my employer made it explicitly clear that you were to be fully aware of your impending death, and also of the reason for your death’s impendency." A chubby hand wiped over thinning hair and Ernesto gulped before taking several stuttering starts at speech.  Eventually, he garnered enough control over his vocal chords and quivering lips to get something coherent out.

                "What?  You're gonna kill me?  Why?  I ain't done nothing wrong!  I'm just a businessman!  Okay, so not a very successful one, but Jesus I ain't a bad guy!"  She sighed, a mixture of boredom and disappointment.  They always said it - the ones who got the chance, anyway.  Oh please, I'm not a bad guy!  I've done nothing wrong!  Don't kill me!  As if they seriously expected her to go Oh, you're right, you're entirely nice and innocent; sorry to have troubled you!  Sure, there were one or two who'd just nodded quietly and closed their eyes as they awaited that final, terminal moment, but most blubbered and begged.  It was so damned undignified.  Whatever they'd been in life, she always hoped that people could at least be graceful and noble in death.  Last chance, after all.  She glanced over at the corner of the desk to her left, just behind a stack of "Payment Due!" letters, then picked up the box of tissues she'd espied and threw it to him.  Startled, and nearly dropping it, Ernesto gave a tiny nod of automatic thanks and grabbed a couple of tissues to mop at the sweat on his jowly, moustachioed face.

                "You've cheated on all three of your wives and you never pay your alimony money; you've twice paid for your secretary, Janice, to have an abortion, against her wishes; you owe a lot of people a lot of money, and some of them aren't even crooked; you haven't spoken to your eldest son, Rafael, since the night he tearfully came out to you and you threw him out of the house; and when you were fourteen years old you masturbated over your sleeping younger sister and until just now you didn't think anyone ever found out."  He stood stock-still, tissue box hanging limply in one hand and the other frozen halfway to his face, clutching a wad of damp tissue.  He didn't say a word, but his expression said everything.  "You are definitely not a decent guy, and I would go so far as to say that you are, by and large, a dishonest and extremely unpleasant man who has dubious personal hygiene standards.  But that doesn't mean you deserve to die."  There was a look of relief on the man's face, as optimism and hope surfaced against all the odds.  "No, I'm going to kill you for something that, really, isn't even your fault," and back beneath the waves of despair sank that brief glimpse of hope, "and something that I cannot in all honesty blame you for.  Four years ago, you lost control of your car, a battered 1986 Buick LeSabre Coupé.  The car was in poor repair because you couldn't afford to go to a mechanic, the brakes failed on a rainy night, and your car didn't stop in time to prevent the death of a seven year-old boy called James Hannah.  The jury found you to be not guilty of dangerous driving, and ruled young James' death a tragic accident that nobody could be blamed for.  Frank Hannah, James' father, felt otherwise, and spent the following years saving up enough money to go to my employer and pay for my services."

                "But...!  You said it yourself!  It was an accident!" The tissue box fell to the floor, and so did the sweating and rightly terrified Mr Hernandez as he went down on both knees  before the suited young lady sitting where his butt had made itself comfy for a fairly significant portion of the past few years.

                "I did.  And if it were my call, I would not even be here this evening.  But it's not my call, so I am.  And, please, don't beg, or try to reason with me, or offer to double whatever I'm being paid.  I wouldn't be a very good assassin if I was so easily swayed, would I?  Now, before I end this, is there anything you'd like to say?"  His tanned, rounded, and fat-creased face looked up to her, pleading in his tear-wetted eyes.  "It won't make a difference to the outcome - at some point in the next couple of minutes you're going to be fatally shot.  But everyone's entitled to a last few words."  His shoulders sagged, his face fell, and Ernesto Hernandez looked at the worn, faded, and grimy carpet of his small, dingy office.

                "I..." He looked out of the window; the sun was starting to set over the bay - the view was the only thing that made this office worth the rent.  Someone, somewhere, was having their first cocktail of the evening.  Ernesto looked again to the person who would be his killer. "Tell Janice I'm sorry.  For everything.  Tell her I know she's been stealing small amounts from me; I never said anything because I... okay, I don't love her but I, y'know, I care for her.  A bit.  She's put up with a lot of shit for me.  From me.  I'd have been fucked without her.  Tell her that the rest of my money is hers.  She knows where I keep it.  Hell, she might as well have the car, too; not like I can leave it to Miquel.  An' tell Mr Hannah that I'm sorry about his son.  It was an accident, but it was still my fault.  Hey, if I could go back, I woulda walked home that day.  So just... just tell him I'm sorry, kay?"  She nodded once, politely, and continued to sit there, clearly not in a rush.

                "Is that everything?" A hand hinted towards the chunky grey/black gun on the desk and two slightly bloodshot brown eyes followed the movement.

                "Yeah.  Just don't shoot me in the face.  I'm an ugly sunnuva bitch, I know, but my mama would wanna see me one last time before she said goodbye. " Another nod, and then she stood slowly from the leather chair, brushed a crease out of the leg of her pinstripe suit trousers, and picked up the gun from the desk.

                "Understandable," she took a suppressor from an inside pocket of her tailored jacket and screwed it onto the end of the pistol's barrel, "This won't hurt, Mr Hernandez.  Close your eyes."  Ernesto closed his eyes, never to open them again, and two muffled whispers followed immediately after.  His body barely shook from the close-range impacts and, after a few moments, the late Ernesto Javier Hernandez Ibarra fell slowly sideways to land with a quiet, corpulent thud onto the floor of his office.  Were his eyes still open, and had there been life left to see through them, Ernesto would have watched the sun kiss the ocean one last time.

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                Janice Ridley (née Simmons; she'd kept her husband's name even after divorcing his drunken arse) opened her eyes and immediately regretted it as two cold bolts of pain shot through her temples.  Whimpering quietly and screwing her eyes to slits, and even then peering between the fingers of her left hand, she stumbled to her feet and staggered over to the window for her "office", yanking the blinds shut.  Leaning against the wall for support, she moved her hand to her mouth as a wave of nausea courses through her, and successfully fought back the urge to expel her supper onto the floor.  Jesus, what the fuck had happened?  Groggy as all hell, she made her way back to her desk and collapsed into her chair as she waited for the fog and dizziness to pass, or at least fade to something she could cope with.  Right now was like all her worst hangovers rolled into one, and without even the decency of having had fun earning them. 

                As her vision swam in and out of focus, she noticed an envelope on her desk, left open so that the lip acted as a stand, and with something written on the back.  It took a little effort and time, but she managed to decipher the blurry symbols enough to realise it was her name.  One hand clinging onto her chair's arm as if life depended on it, she reached unsteadily forward to take the envelope, and pull out its contents.  The very effort of focusing her eyes made them hurt even more, but she persevered, and slowly made sense out of the contents of the hand-written note.  Whoever had written it, they could have benefitted from some penmanship lessons, but the writing was intelligible and large enough for her to just about read, even in her state.

                She read it, at length, and then read it again.  It was from Ernie, but it wasn't his handwriting, and it wasn't his signature.  Heck, didn't look like anyone's signature, just a single letter - "T".  Janice set the letter down, puzzled, then looked over to the door to Ernie's office.

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                The scream was heard from across the narrow harbour, and the few people enjoying cocktails at the outside tables of the Tiki bar looked up from their drinks in surprise.  All except for one, who simply nodded, took a sip of her drink, and then tucked a twenty dollar bill underneath the glass before getting up and exiting the bar, straightening the jacket of her pinstripe suit as she went.

Future Echoes - The Artemis Project

Working title for a work in progress.  Only really got as far as establishing the villain-protagonist's backstory and introducing her adversary by name and status.  What follows is a first-draught, with a lot of editing needed to fill in the gaps, add detail, and smooth it all out.

Larva

“Oh sugarplum, are we forgetting something?”  Harry stared aghast as the thing kept on coming.  Six rounds.  He’d fired six fucking solid-state rounds, all centre of mass, and barely slowed her.  “Mmm, I know what comes next.  Click, click, right?” Her tone was saccharin and arsenic, all sickly-sweet and casually mocking while promising death on the horizon, and the horizon was getting closer by the second, “That impotent little sound that tells everyone you’re all spent.  And looky-here, I’m still breathing.” Fuck, fuck, fuck.  Turn.  Just turn and run.  He knew this place, these warrens.  7th sector was his home, baby.  She could take a beating but nobody knew this overgrown science-project like he did.  Duck down into the conduit, flickering emergency lights overhead.  Past the steam pipes, across the sheets, shin up the angle and across again.  Round the corner, leap the short gap, vault over the cross-shot and- “Nice place you got here.  Love what you’ve done with the decor.  Care to dance or are you having too much fun running?” Jesus that grin.  Blood on her teeth – he knew he’d hit a lung – and standing there fresh as shit, those red-smeared ivories gleaming in contrast to the deepest shadow tones of her fur.  She was truly a thing of beauty, if your tastes swung towards the morbid and suicidal – all sleek, lean muscle, perfectly proportioned and perfectly poised.  AI-Father help him now, he was as boned as boned could be.

                “What...  What the fuck do you want?!”  Back to the pipes, empty slugger in paw and hanging limp.  This was... This was... where the fuck were the zero-tol team??

                “Same thing we all want, sweetheart.  Life.  But you weren’t about to give it to me, despite all your promises of love.  And those silly little children in their expensive armour with their fancy guns... somebody really should have let them use real rounds.  Wouldn’t have helped them but it would at least have made it better sport for me.  Mmm.”  She stepped closer.  Harry froze.  A vein in his forehead throbbed.  Looked like the cavalry had already run into this walking death and met their demise.  But he had a speedloader.  He could be loaded, cocked and ready in... about two seconds longer than it would take her to cross the half dozen metres separating them and make him wave bye-bye to his wet bits.  Who the hells was he kidding?  He wasn’t combat-synched!  The ZT guys had been and that hadn’t helped them.  As for this pitch-black nightmare before him... Synched?  She was combat.  He should know.  Years of his life spent working on her neurones, her reflexes, her acuity loadout.  He knew her parameters and specs better than she did.

                “I... I can get you out.  I have the access codes.  Please, just don’t kill me and you can get what you want.  Take my pass, my karma... you could get halfway to the No-Go with them and outside of the Core you could easily find someone to get you beyond Parliament’s reach.  Look, I have a wife, children...”  She smiled gently, almost kindly.  He didn’t find that reassuring.  Three graceful strides and she was toe-to-toe with him, her paw stroking his cheek soothingly.

                “Silly goose.  We both know I don’t need your consent.  Just what you have up here.” A solitary finger, tapping against his temple.  His harddrive.  His goddamn CHD.  Sure, give her a link, great idea.  Then she can interface with any kinda tech she needs.  Sweet.  Only wasn’t there supposed to be some sort of fucking contingency plan?  Jesus wept, they let the scientists design the weapon and the coprolithic military design the fail-safes!

                “I know.  Fuck me I know.  Just, please... make it quick?” Eyes full of pleading, heart full of despair.  Her loving smile and the gentle cooing sound she made said it all.  And his screams provided the long, drawn-out epilogue.