The woman rolled on the filthy wood floor to silence her fall through the window. She held her breath for several seconds listening for any sign that she had been detected. Above her head she still heard the angry shouting in taiwanese and several children sobbing and wimpering. A woman shouted and a thud echoed in the room. The childrens' cries faded almost instantly.
The intruder dropped her large hat, empty purse and disposable camera. So gently that she didnt even leave shoe prints in the dust, she made her way to the door leading to the stairs. Testing each step before accending was always tricky but years of experience had taught her that stepping as close to the wall and as close to the edge as possible made the least took nearly a minute to reach the top and the whole time she could hear several voices shouting out ever increasing numbers. It made her sick.
At the top of the stairs a hallway lead her to the room she was searching for. Her lip curled and she straightened her shoulders. The small group of people snapped around and stared at the sound of her clearing throat. "I hope I'm not interupting." She piped in perfect taiwanese. "I do hate to be a bother but would you all mind dropping dead and allowing me to rescue these children?"
He voice was laced with honey and it took the men in front of her a moment to realize what was happening. That minute was all she needed. By the time any of them moved three were lying on the floor in pools of their own blood, knives sticking out of the hallow of their collar bones.
The woman was fast and surprisingly agile for wearing flipflops and jeans. She dropped and rolled to avoid being peppered with bullets. Another knife spun across the room and the gunman was dead before he hit the ground.
The knife weilding woman straightened back up and stared down the other men. Her eyes dared them to make a move and much to her disgust one of them did. The shortest of the group reached into his breast pocket and pulled out several bundles of Taiwan dollars, "You take." He stuttered in broken Taiwanese, "We go."
"Oh I don't think so." The woman now spoke in English, "I'm going to give you a choice;" She translated her words back into the native tongue, "you can submit to being arrested and my people will take you to jail where you will spend the rest of you lives. But only if you give us all of the names of your associates and where I can find them." She watched as three of the seven men glared at her an began to protest. "Or," she waited for them to be silent, "I will kill you now and not loose a night of sleep over your bloodied carcasses."
No surprise that all of the men readily chose imprisonment over death. Waisting no time, the woman fastened electronic handcuffs to them and the woman who was standing with the dozen children. A quick call on her cell and she turned her back on the adults and gave her full attention to the children.
"Do all of you speak taiwanese?" The children nodded. "Good. I have called my friends and they are going to pick you up and take you to a safe place were men and women like that wil never be able to hurt you." She knelt infront of a small boy and tilted his face up to hers so she could see the welted handprint on his cheek. "Did the woman hit you?" The boy nodded.
An angry fire burned in her chest and she stood and stalked toward the woman who began scooting backward, "Do you enjoy striking children?" The fire in her eyes could have killed the woman in front of her, but she would not grant her such mercy. Instead she grabbed the collar of her cotton shirt and struck her hard across the cheek leaving a print identical to the boy's. "You are all lucky and should be grateful that I am allowing you to live." She sneered at the cowering adults, "You are lucky I answer to a higher power or you would all be dead. I let you live only so that I can catch others like you and execute them. If you are lucky enough to be granted a phone call, I would suggest you warn everyone you know to hide from me. I have no quams about killing monsters. I am The Child's Knife and I exact judgment for the innocents."