Russian Roulette

by Revokov

The story of what happened to the Terrornova assassins after Seraph Castle, told through Malevex's irreverent point of view.

Russian Roulette

            I've been putting this chat off for quite a while, hoping you people would just buzz off and get back to doing whatever it is you do at this time of night, but since I'm not going to get a wink of sleep otherwise I might as well get it over with.

            I'd like to start by addressing all those of you who lead normal, upright, lawful, repetitive day-to-day lives one simple question: how do you do it? How do you rise like zombies every morning, get up, go degrade yourselves in some so-called workplace, come home, eat meals while discussing whatever mundane events happened during the day, clonk out and then do it again the next day? Because I've tried it. Believe me, I've tried it. But I must tell you friends, foes, allies, enemies, Jesuit nuns, short order cooks and anyone else who's paying attention that after careful scientific research I have concluded that switching from my previous lifestyle to one of "normalcy" is as impossible as teaching Carrot Top how to act.

            I suppose most of it is my own fault. Becoming a bloodthirsty Maverick was probably not the most stellar career move, no matter how satisfying it was. If I had to do it over, I'd probably tone down the phenomenal destruction and lingering chaos—you know, all that junk those silly authority figures like to call acts of "horrific evil." Thus, I'd be using conventional heavy weapons instead of nuclear missiles. Yeah, I fired nukes at government installations. I definitely burned a bridge, there.

            By rights I should be so dead that regular corpses seem like headbangers in my presence, but I was unexpectedly issued a Get Out Of Sheol Free Card, and I used that sucker right away. Aspiring to get away from the cold, snowy climes found in Megacity 5's Catskill Mountains I experienced another characteristic stroke of genius and moved to Russia. So I'm no travel agent. Eat me. Accompanying me were two fine upstanding killers who'd also been spared the executioner's axe—I need to get me an axe one of these days, one of those cool adaman ones with dragons carved all over 'em—and together we figured out a game plan.

            Oh, how to atone for a lifetime of sin and wickedness? It's so much harder than you preachy ne'er-do-ills claim. There's no twelve-step program for my kind. There aren't any meetings where I can stand up and say, "Hi, I'm Malevex, and I'm a nuclear terrorist." No, we were on our own, and aside from turning ourselves into the local Hunter nest—which will happen at the precise moment Satan bundles up for a chilly day on the Cocytus ski slopes—there didn't seem to be any overt way of cleansing ourselves of the darkness in our hearts. I think this was probably because we didn't give a shit.

            The difference between a terrorist and a revolutionary is all in the eye of the beholder. In your eyes, watching the mushroom cloud on your shiny Magnavox 21XX, the Maverick bombing of Megacity 5 must have just been atrocious. "All those people dead!" you probably thought at one point or another, with pangs of sympathy in your heart and maybe even a tear on your cheek. Whereas I, I watched it from the Seraph Castle viewscreen and thought, "All those people dead!" But there was no tear on my cheek. I was grinning ear to ear and nursing a Budweiser. Now that I think about it, though, the whole thing was a terrible, disastrous mistake. The scene merited at least a Sam Adams.

            I suppose my mirth in this area makes me some kind of sadistic monster, right? A vicious fiend whose heart is so black that no light will ever penetrate it, that's what one fine gent called me. But as cool as "vicious fiend" sounds, I must protest. (My heart, however, is indeed black, but that's hardly my fault. I didn't build me.) You see, from the standpoint of a revolutionary, I was doing what I thought was necessary to free my people. "Bullshit," you may say, especially if you happen to be a card-carrying member of My People. "We don't need freeing, we need understanding." In a sense, I can now admit that is true, but in another sense we still need maniacs like me running around shooting people. Item: Until the nuclear attacks, General Klementi Virdelko of the Megacity Armed Forces was the champion of the anti-Reploid movement, and he didn't have much of a use for the "understanding" cited above. After I started goofing off, however, Virdelko became so guilt ridden that he switched camps, and is now a fervent supporter of Reploid rights. Some say he is simply a schizophrenic, but I would like to believe I know better. Bottom line: Megacity 5, and soon other cities like it given Virdelko's newfound powers, has never been a better place for Reploids to live.

            Still not satisfied? Take this into consideration, then: I know something you don't know. Pay close attention, ne'er-do-ills, especially My People, because this is gonna rock your socks. Picture those anti-Reploid assassination attempts carried out by fanatics like The Furies and other ultraracist groups. Now picture it on a worldwide scale and backed by the Megacity System's central government. I know this program existed, because I was a part of it, as were my two comrades. I was forced to doubletap members of my own race in the forehead simply because they were "too powerful" in the eyes of the government.

            You don't believe me, do you? Of course you don't. That would require a departure from the cozy safety of what you perceive to be everyday reality. But whether you choose to buy it or not, the project existed. What happened was, a team of scouts went out, usually led by an animal whose name I mention as little as possible. I'll say it once here for your benefit: Chartreuse. He'd pick out Reploids who were "dangerously powerful" and report their names to Colonel Kitao, the project overseer. Old Charry knew what'd happen to those Reploids, and I think the sick bastard enjoyed it. He himself is a Reploid, and thus we call him the Traitor. After our sadistic friend selected the targets, enslaved schmucks like me were sent out to murder the Reploids. Often they were innocent, law-abiding fellows just like you. Sometimes they were even members of the Army, or the Maverick Hunter organization. We got our asses kicked if we screwed up, and the humans did what they could to make our lives hell.

            But then, there came Sigma. Like a savior from above, he proclaimed freedom for all Reploids and started a revolutionary war to achieve it. Our unit was disbanded, but we escaped before they could lop our heads off. This presented a problem—if our story got around, no Reploid would hold back from joining Sigma's ranks. So the Traitor was sent to chase and kill us, and he succeeded in all but four cases, including me. Years later the four of us regrouped, joined Sigma, and with the aid of a benefactor calling himself "Kou Cao" we produced nuclear weapons and began to construct an airship to deliver our presents. But woe and alas, the great Sigma turned out to be a crock and Kou Cao wound up being the Traitor in new dress. Only three of us four made it out of the Maverick fort, thanks solely to the efforts of a repentant Maverick Hunter who wishes to remain anonymous. His name is Zero.

            The general reaction to this story usually leaves the lips of a human: "It doesn't matter. Nothing can justify acts of terror." To which I eloquently respond: what the fuck is your excuse, asshole? You high and mighty humans have oppressed any and all creatures under the sun, including members of your own ranks, for reasons that your philosophers and other apologists have tried to explain away for decades. Terror is the international sport of humanity, and don't give me any garbage to the contrary. I know what I'm talking about. I'm made in your image, after all.

            I'm ranting again, aren't I? Oh well. That's what happens whenever I bring up the past. But don't leave yet. Pull up a chair, have some vodka. Don't worry, it's the good stuff—Russians consume more vodka than they do air, do you think they'd settle for second rate American garbage? Now that we've established my motives for past actions—whether you accept them as reasonable or not—we can move onto the reason we're here. You want to know what happened to us after Seraph Castle. There's not a grand lot to tell, but I'm certainly willing to tell it.

            First let's call attention to my two traveling companions. The first is Mortar. You may know him as Valentin Volnin, founder and president of the Halo private accounting firm. But before he had money pouring out of his ass, he was a grizzled old bear of a Maverick. I still remember him marching out of the Shermetyevo runway, glowering like a devil. When I met up with him I of course asked what was eating him, and his answer will sustain me through many a dull moment:

            "Crabs."

            Okay, so maybe you had to be there. The story behind the moment was, the hired help on Mortar's flight had mistakenly served up crab legs that were well past their due date. Mortar, who had suspected something instantly when crab legs appeared on a second class menu, had declined to order them, but he'd then faced the unfortunate sound of people making use of their barf bags all flight long. When I asked why he didn't just slip on headphones, he informed me that the in-flight movie was "Signs"; the retching was preferable.

            I was already in Russia, having stepped off a different flight a day earlier. We'd split up before leaving the System, just in case, but frankly nothing was tearing me apart from my traveling companion. Her name is Teytha, and before leaving Seraph Castle we decided we were quite in love with each other. Because of her, I will at least twice in this tale lose my biting edge and become a deeply moved, deeply smitten narrator. If you can't deal with it take a cyanide pill. Our flight was much saner than Mortar's, probably because we spent most of it sleeping. Airplane seats aren't the ideal beds, but compared to the cave we'd been hiding in it was heaven.

            "Gospazha Krilova," the customs agent said as we entered the European Union via Moscow's Shermetyevo airport. The woman who'd be known as Anya Krilova smiled gracefully as the agent waved her past and came to me. "And Gospodin…?"

            I'd used cover names before, but I knew this one would have to last a lot longer than the others. Thus, I'd put a truckload of thought into figuring out what would suit me best. A while back I saw the film "Doctor Zhivago". There's something about these old movies that makes them work a hell of a lot better than modern ones, with all their cheesy flashy effects. Doctor Zhivago didn't need that. It had Omar Sharif. Actually I didn't care too much for the doc, but there was this one other guy who caught my attention. He was one of the Bolshevik madmen, and he was kind of a wimpy looking guy but his name stuck: Stralnikov. I don't know if that's how you spell it, but it works well enough for my tastes. I'm not a fan of communism, unless we're telling jokes, but the revolutionary behind the name did appeal to me. I'd be damned if I was naming myself "Pasha" though, and instead chose Vladimir. I try to tell myself that I didn't intend to reflect the good old Impaler, but a little voice inside tells me every time that I'm lying. And so Vlad Stralnikov entered the lenience of the European Union, safe behind a name he thought was cool as hell and a blank slate in the eyes of the law.

            Those first days were atrocious. Disoriented in the land of the civilians, we lodged ourselves in a second rate motel and began to collect our bearings. We snatched what money was left in the Maverick accounts—accounts of dead humans, maintained by the brilliant but very wasted Cyber Peacock—and grabbed an apartment in downtown Moscow. We were, for a time, afraid to even go outside. Not a one of us had a reasonable clue of how to fit in with people who weren't paranoid beyond belief of being blown up. In the realm of international covert operations, we were gods. In red light Moscow, a mound of dogshit could have outsmarted us.

            Then one day Mortar was tempted out into the streets by a Krispy Kreme sale at the local grocery store.

            "It's amazing!" the ecstatic Reploid had announced, barging back into the two-bedroom flat with his arms full of gorgeous white Krispy Kreme boxes. Even the thought of them makes me hungry. "We were wrong, all wrong! The people out there, they all are paranoid beyond belief of being blown up! And you know why? People like us!"

            I was so proud of being part of a group with such influence on the world that I promptly went out and bought us all snow cones.

            Once we realized how normal we really were, we began to frequent the only places in Moscow worth frequenting—the bars. Here was where we met all the people worth talking to. There was Gorov, the Commander of the local Hunter base. Durin, a major information vendor. Sergei Starkov, a weapons developer slash dealer. And my personal favorite, Ludmilla, a bitchy janitor who liked to sit near the windows and scream obscenities at random passerby. Occasionally she'd hit upon a really creative insult, and I'd write it down. My favorite is "poncy freeloading francoflork". Before you ask, I have no idea what a francoflork is, nor have I had the courage to ask Ludmilla. We did try to hang out in "normal" places, such as dance clubs and movie theaters, but to no avail. Dance clubs are the single most oppressive places in the world for reforming terrorists, what with all the fun going on, and if I may say so, modern music blows harder each year. Movie theaters, while a seemingly foolproof concept, were a miserable failure. Both Teytha and I have seen far too much Mystery Science Theater to take anything that appears on a screen as seriously as it needs to be taken. Fortunately we both have the same taste in the movies we do want to watch—mad comedy and action equals good, lovey dovey kissy huggy equals bad. I don't know where this girl came from but god damn I'm glad she's mine. Mortar just eschews movies altogether, opting to eat doughnuts and party instead.

            Along the lines of racism, it is incredibly rare in the Union. I'm probably making a gross overstatement, but chalk it up to culture shock. In the System, people were curtailing Reploid rights every which way. Eastward, however, everything is cool. They'll even marry Reploids. There was only one incident race-wise I can remember where things got out of hand for me. Teytha and I were returning from one of our local haunts and we came upon a burly human on a bridge who somehow recognized Teytha as a Reploid and chucked an empty beer bottle her way. When I confronted him about the issue he very kindly informed me that it was all right, she was just a Reploid. I very kindly threw him off the bridge. In hindsight this was a poor choice, because the screams woke up nearby residents and we had to book it back to the apartment. Also the guy had to have been pretty drunk—I'd heard it in his voice. Fret not for our luckless miscreant, however. The drop was all of about six feet before he hit the water, water that was again at the most six feet deep. I saw a picture in the news the other day, and he was just fine. I expected Teytha to give me hell for overreacting but instead she just shook her head at me and laughed.

            Not long after this happy incident I decided to get a certain something out of the way. Mortar was off looking into jobs—I'll get to that later—and it was just my paramour and I, sitting on our bed looking around at our new world.

            "Could be a lot worse," she observed.

            "Could be a lot better," I countered. "This isn't quite what I imagined."

            "That's what makes it interesting."

            I smiled and looped an arm around her waist. "You're what makes it interesting."

            "Good one." We shared a kiss, strands of dark brown hair mingling with raven black. "You know I don't care what the hell we do out here, so long as it's with you."

            "Yeah, but that's not wholly true." I looked into her sapphire eyes. "You're bored."

            "Well…aren't you…?" She shrugged a little. "We've still got a lot of stuff to look into, you know? Work needs to be done."

            "Don't get too eager to put your nose to the grind."

            "My dear sir, you mistake me." We laid back, our fingers intertwining. "I meant small scale things. The System can wait."

            "What did you have in mind…?"

            Another shrug. "I dunno…a hobby would be nice, I suppose."

            A hobby. Only we could talk about hobbies as though they were foreign concepts, because they were.

            "You liked the stars you saw in the System, didn't you?" I glanced up. "How hard could it be to crack the lock on the roof door?"

            "You think we could see anything, with all the light?"

            "No," we both agreed, but rose and grabbed our coats anyway. Logic would never stop us.

            The cold February air brushed past us but we chose not to mind, huddling against each other and staring up. By some miracle there were indeed visible stars. I vaguely made out Cassiopeia, the "lazy W." Why the hell did that bitch get a constellation named after her if she's such a sloth? "Well what do you know."

            "They're so bright," Teytha breathed, gazing heavenward as the wind brushed her ebon locks gently from side to side across her enthralled face. The moon was unobstructed tonight, and like a spotlight it illuminated her lithe form. Standing there, a glowing angel, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

            "That they are," I agreed, resting my hands on her shoulders.

She turned, smiling, and warmed my chilled cheek with her palm. "You think things'll turn out?"

            "I know they will."

            "Mortar wants his own place. He says he feels like a drag."

            "He's crazy."

            "That's already confirmed. I just feel bad for him. We have each other, but he…I mean, he's really no older than we are, but…"

            "I know." I'd seen the same things in my friend. "Mortar also survived a decade on his own. I think maybe the solo life is calling to him again, as long as he knows we're just a phone call or short-warp away."

            "Yeah…I just still feel bad."

            I smiled wryly. "An unnatural attachment to the old man, is it? I see how it is."

            "Oh, you bastard," she laughed, raising a fist.

            "Back, you! I'm armed!" As I spoke I whisked a small black box from my coat pocket. "And don't think I won't use it."

            She blinked, knowing it right away for what it was. "Malevex, you didn't…"

            "You bet I did." I started to get on one knee but she grabbed my shoulder.

            "Kneel, and I'll kill you."

            "You make it too easy on me." I opened the box, feeling only momentarily foolish about the whole thing. The little gasp that escaped her lips was all I needed to hear. Sergei Starkov happened to know a good jeweler, and I put him to work on a specialized ring. Teytha had made it plain on a number of occasions that she thought eagles were the coolest thing since sliced bread. The diamonds in the gold band were arranged in the form of an attacking eagle in hot pursuit of a serpent.

            "And you do way too much for me…" For a second the sophistication that comes with being former international criminals faded and we were both kids in a pleasantly awkward situation. "You really want to do this?" she asked, looking at me with nervous but eager eyes. "Stand in front of a bunch of people and listen to some hack read legal junk?"

            "No, I want to stand in front of Mortar and maybe one or two others and let some hack read legal junk. But mainly I just want you."

            "You've always had me."

            "Well then let's let them know it." I removed the ring and closed the box, pleasantly surprised when the moonlight shone back off the diamonds. "So, Anya Krilova…will you marry me?"

            A brief flush of embarrassment clouded her face, but she quickly looked back at me, her gorgeous blue eyes already rimmed with tears. Emotions were raging inside me too. Moments like this, moments involving nothing but us, were what we valued most in life. For so long we'd been denied happiness that the emotion of these kinds of scenarios more than quintupled the normal value.

            "Anya Krilova will marry Vlad Stralnikov," she whispered for fear of her voice cracking, holding out her hand. "But will Malevex marry Teytha?"

            "Oh, I think it can be arranged," I smiled, relieved despite the fact that the outcome was more or less determined before the incident began. I slipped the ring on her finger, and she looked at me curiously.

            "How'd you afford this…?"

            I smiled somewhat sharkishly. "Winston Diceman gave me a hand."

            Her eyes went wide. "Diceman…?"

            "I figured he owed us one."

Diceman, if you don't know or don't remember, was a weapons dealer that liked to harass us when we were back in that unit I spoke so lovingly about earlier. During the Seraph Uprising, as it is being called, I had Peacock steal money from Diceman's account in particular, just out of spite, and had amassed enough for the ring and more. Teytha, a devoted lover of irony, managed a surprised laugh before we pulled together in a tight embrace. Time has a habit of flying during these little moments, so I don't know how long it was before my future wife stepped back and grinned, inclining her head towards the streets below. "We're giving them a free show."

            "Guess it's time to relocate," I said with a grin of my own, and acting quickly I whisked her right off her feet and carried her back into the complex. The moon and stars kept right on shining, nearly but not quite as brightly as her eyes.

I'm back. Everything's normal again. See, that wasn't so hard, was it? It was? Bah, you wimps. But luckily for you loveless oafs you won't have to worry about any more deep, emotional, meaningful anecdotes for a while. Instead we're going to talk about something dark and hideous for a change, something that sits at or near the top of Lucifer's list of crowning achievements.

            That's right, I'm talking about entry-level employment.

            We didn't start out as millionaires, you know. As time went on and our accounts started to dwindle we realized if we were ever going to truly be normal we had to get into the working world. Since none of us were looking forward to this, I decided to cheat a bit and call in a favor.

            In my days as a government employed/enforced assassin, I'd been to Russia on a few occasions. It was slightly nostalgic, because I'd been assembled in the Auratech plant in Yekaterinberg, one of many "Vanguard" combat Reploids. While in the land of eternal winter and priceless booze, I'd saved both the life and fortune of a profiteer named Zacharias Villandrov, an energen miner who'd found a substantial deposit in northern Siberia. The Reploid I'd been assigned to kill was for once a malevolent one, and he'd been threatening Villandrov's holdings for some time. Finally snapping and trying to kill the man, he'd fallen to my blade and Villandrov had been eternally grateful, promising me a series of favors if I lived long enough to collect them. Well, live I had, and so had he, and in a matter of three phone calls I reached his manor.

            Regrettably, Gospodin Villandrov would not be in the country for another two months.

            I guess I could have pressed the issue, but instead I took it as a blessing. I could now see life through the eyes of an everyday average Joe. Starkov scored Teytha a job with a weapons developer he knew, and Durin had use for an informations trafficker, but just for shits and giggles I decided to do things the legal way instead, and applied at Wal-Mart.

            Call me blasphemous, but I find Wal-Mart's rise to global dominion even more resonating than the human figure Christ's rise from the tomb. In the past, it was only North America that wriggled under the Walton family's stranglehold, but now those bastards own the whole damn planet. Most infuriating of all is the fact that they still use the same smiley face mascot. I want to punch Smiley Face in the eye every time I see him on TV, and now I'd be working side by side with him. I hoped we could be professional about things.

            It turned out that you couldn't teach an old dog new tricks, after all. I rang up purchases of all shapes and sizes, my spy's eyes scanning every face and linking them to their new property. I must say, you people are sick. First of all, I find it amazing how many of you actually buy those tabloids. Worse, for every one of you that buy them for a good laugh there are two more who stare maddeningly at the headlines of "ELVIS ALIVE IN REPLOID BODY" and "BAT BOY SUCKED INTO JET ENGINE" with the kind of fervor seen only in jihad enthusiasts and cry "I knew it! I knew JonBenet's dog did it!" There were, however, plenty of upstanding folks who made off with The Onion, still going strong and now worldwide. Instead of crap like "NOSTRADAMUS PREDICTS MARTIAN SPIDERMONKEYS WILL ATTACK SOON" the Onion provides the world with "NOSTRADAMUS IS SICK OF YOUR SHIT." Actually I made that one up, but I wish they'd write it.

            But no matter how much I wanted to smack all of you who bought tabloids, I really wanted to throttle you wackos who have a different implant for each inch of your body. In the modern world you can buy augmentation products over the counter, and I was amazed at how far it goes. For instance I saw a finger implant. A finger implant. What a world it is we live in when people wallow in insecurity over having small fingers.

            I soon learned that I was not the only soldier of the Wal-Martian army who was dissatisfied with the way of the world. The first time I met this guy was when a fight broke out between two career cashiers—folks who work their whole lives at Wal-Mart with an almost religious fervor and whose life aspiration is to one day make Manager. Both were the kind of burly disheveled oafs you'd find on any low-grade talk show (which is a bad description, since all talk shows are in fact low-grade) and both had hated each other's guts for the longest time. One covered his feelings of gross inadequacy by proclaiming the Word of God to anyone who would listen, while in fact he knew as much about scripture as I do about ballet (meaning nothing, you smirking bastards). The other just tended to get pissed off a lot. No one much liked either combatant, and we all gathered to watch as Angry Man assaulted Zealot with verbal blows that made the latter man purple in the face with rage.

            Then here comes a Reploid with spiky blue hair and a Wal-Mart smiley face apron. I knew him as a shelf stocker, and had listened to enough of his conversations to know that he was hilarious. I was not, however, prepared for this blasphemous event.

            Coils of multicolored energy snaked around the Reploid as he strode calmly towards the mortal foes with an air of supreme authority. "Sheath ye thine swords of anger, for it displeases I who oversee all."

            "Who the fuck are you?" Angry Man asked.

            "I am God."

            "Bullshit," Zealot said smugly, as though he were the only one to have figured that out. "Buzz off."

            God crossed his arms over his chest and the multicolored aura around him grew brighter. "Did you just tell the Lord your God to buzz off, worm?"           

            The thing that froze Zealot to the ground wasn't the words, but the voice—his new adversary had sounded just like him. "What…no…"

            "You stole his voice!" Angry Man declared, clenching his fists. "Give it back!"

            "Dost thou challenge my power?" God asked in Angry Man's voice, before reverting to his own. "Don't make me smite you, buster."

            For a second I thought there was going to be a Maverick attack, but the two humans scurried off, evidently thinking the same thing and inadvertently preventing it. "False idol!" Zealot screamed.

            "I'll remember that," God called after them, "when I'm judging your souls!"

            Later on I learned that God's real name was Zade, and like me he was a recent immigrant to Europe, only he hailed from Australia. "I'm a wee bit desperate," Zade said as we walked home from the Walton fortress of free enterprise. "I hit a quagmire of bad luck and now I'm 'ere to beg for scraps."

            "I don't imagine life at Wal-Mart has helped your psyche," I offered.

            "Degrading as hell, mate, though I suppose it has its moments, don't it?"

            "Not really," we both said in unison, rounding a corner. "I'm in a similar boat," I picked up. "Waiting for an old friend to get back in town. He owes me a few favors."

            "I'm waitin' for someone too," Zade replied curiously. "He don't owe me any favors, though. 'Fact, I'll be owin' him if he can get me some work."

            "What kind of work do you do?"

            "Don't think you wanna know, mate."

            "Oh, try me."

            Zade frowned. "It's not exactly legal."

            "Mercenary?"

            "How about we try you first. What's your business here?"

            "Me?" I shrugged. "I unleashed devastating weapons upon the world and launched a war against humanity, and I'm waiting for the heat to blow over."

            Zade threw back his head and laughed. "Good one. 'Fraid all I have isn't quite as funny, but I used to work for a syndicate working out of the Megacity System."

            My steps slowed ever so slightly, but I recovered quickly enough that Zade didn't notice. "Yeah, that is pretty weak."

            "This'd be my stop." Zade fired off a salute. "Till morning, Mr. Stralnikov."

            "Till morning, God."

            For a relatively small amount of money I got Durin to run a background check on Zade, giving him the name and a physical description. Before long, every underworld power Durin knew of was scanned for info regarding my target's activities and statistics. The info I got for my money stated that the Reploid calling himself Zade originated in Sydney and worked there as a mercenary for Alex Rooney, a onetime affiliate of Kou Cao, the Gold Serpent. Further investigations revealed that Rooney was still in cahoots with my old friend the Traitor and Zade had somehow fallen from grace. His usual partner, a fellow named Dynamo, had been tasked with exterminating Zade but had failed for some reason or another. What the report more or less told me was that I was mopping Wal-Mart's floors with another archenemy of Kou Cao, and that was, if I remember the word correctly, scrumptulescent. Even more convenient was the fact that Zade and I were both waiting for the same person: Villandrov.

            What wasn't so good was that Australia was its own separate entity. Until now, all reports had indicated that Kou Cao was staying within the System, but clearly things were not as they seemed. My enemy was extending his reach…and he still remained totally unchallenged.

            Perhaps right now we can see the beginnings of my eventual return to the Dark Side. I pushed the thoughts from my mind, but it was harder to so than I'd have liked. For one thing, it was contradictory as hell. I'd just barely scraped my way out of Death's front door, and yet a part of me wanted to ring the doorbell again. More importantly, though, was a desire to keep Teytha and Mortar out of the line of fire, and so regardless of my apprehensions I was able to shut down any thought of launching a campaign against the Gold Serpent. For now.

            I did, however, convince Zade to drop his guard. The three of us met him at a bar one night, comparing mercenary stories. We presented ourselves as former mercenaries who were at a crossroads in life, which I knew to be more or less his own situation. In no time we established a bit of camaraderie. I kept asking myself, why do I want him as a comrade? You only have comrades in a confrontation of some sorts.

            "My favorite asset," Zade was saying, "is my voice box. Whoever made me decided it would be a bloody good time to have me copying people's vocal tones like a chameleon changes colors."

            "Can't most Reploids do that?" Teytha asked.

            "Aye, love, they can," Zade said, in a voice that perfectly matched my fiancée's crystal clear notes. "But they're not as nearly as convincing as me."

            "I would have so much fun with that," Mortar said thoughtfully.

            "This one time, at band camp," Zade said with a smirk, "I got into a bit of a tiff with a businessman who thought I fancied his wife. Gods, man, I'd sooner poke me' eyes out with rusty forks than roll with a human. But just for fun, I called the bloke later on, using his dearest's voice, and told him eight seconds just didn't cut it for her anymore and that she'd moved on to an Aussie that actually lasted as long as she did."

            I snickered and shook my head. "You, sir, are a bastard."

            "Here, here!" Mortar said, raising a glass in toast.

            Zade's second favorite asset was his ability to generate a curtain of colored energies, such as the kind he'd used in the Wal-Mart, for use in camouflage. A perfect addition to any covert agency, a voice in my head said before I remembered not to think about covert agencies.

            "What's wrong with you?" Mortar asked, two days later in the kitchen/living room of our apartment. Apparently my schizophrenia was more apparent than I'd imagined.

            "Just thinking, you know?" I replied, crashing on the couch.

            "No, I don't." Mortar leaned on a counter, frowning. "It's like you can't focus on shit anymore. Not that your hard vocation requires it, but still."

            "If you must know, it does have to do with vocations."

            "You're thinking about going after Chartreuse."

            I blinked, taken aback. Sure, I'd been thinking about it and planning it for a few weeks now…but I must not have realized it. "Not in so many words."

            "I knew it," Mortar exhaled, sitting down now. "You just can't let sleeping dogs lie, can you?"

            "I can. He can't. And he's not sleeping, by the way. He's already in Australia, how long do you think before he gets here?" I scowled. "I'm not foolish enough to think we can defeat the whole Gold Serpent network ourselves, but we should at least develop some means to resist him when he does come."

            "With what?" Mortar asked, tilting his head. "What do we have that we can use to stop him? We have no assets. No money."

            "Not yet," I agreed, rubbing at my eyes. My eyes are weird. One is blue and the other is green. Some fan artist had a temporary bout of insanity, probably, or my builders were just colorblind. "But if our friend Villandrov ever gets his ass back home, things'll change."

            "What do you have up your sleeve?" Mortar's eyes narrowed. "You're expecting something specific from this man."

            "In a way, yes. I expect something big. I have no idea what that might be, though."

            "Malevex. You need to be careful." Mortar frowned deeply. "No offense, but when you start thinking up a scheme, mind numbing chaos usually follows."

            "Yes, but we are rarely hurt by it," I countered with a sloppy grin. "It's the poor bastards who are in our way."

            "Low profile," Mortar said slowly. "Loooow proooofile. Remember that. Zero's people won't be so kind to us again."

            "We won't give the Hunters anything to worry about," I said, meaning it. "But we won't let the Traitor just march on in here. Besides," I added, deflating slightly. "I frankly don't know what the hell else to do here."

            "I guess…you have a point there."

            I looked at him. "You want your own place."

            "Don't be offended."

            "I'm not."

            "Good." Mortar smiled tiredly. "I just need to start over, same as with you and Teytha."

            "Still into the accounting thing?"

            Mortar had gotten involved in a global accounting firm, and mostly handled allocations. He said it was like a big strategy video game, deciding where and when to place your assets on the table. "More fun than you'd think. Teytha's having a blast making weapons, and you…"

            "I'm screwing around like a wastrel. I know."

            Mortar's point was made. Two days later Zade and I both resigned from Wal-Mart, Zade jettisoning a quart of milk into Zealot's face after the man announced, "God has left the building." I went to Durin and secured spots for both of us as spies. So began three days of the easiest work I have ever done, but to Durin it was earthshaking. He immediately made us controllers of his agents, and I felt at once at home. You see, before I was Malevex, mad bomber extraordinaire, I ran spies for the Gold Serpent who ultimately betrayed me. I proved to be exceptionally good at it, and more importantly I found it to be fun as hell. My record was and is, I feel safe to say, better than yours, whoever you are. Need to know where a weapons shipment is heading next? I'm on the job. Wanna find out who Megacity 5 mayor Marcus Raleigh is screwing this week? Look no further!

            "I'm glad to see you've found your niche," Teytha observed one night, tinkering with a lightsaber.

            "I've always known it," I replied, laying on the bed and scanning some of Zade's reports. "I just forgot how much I missed it." I looked up, amused at the immersed look on her face. "And how about you? I didn't know you were such a gearhead."

            "Me neither." She grinned, like a student who was about to show off an A paper. "Union technology is so different from System technology. Imagine a merger of the two."

            "You won't find it in the militaries," I pointed out. "They have laws."

            "But we don't." She crossed to the bed, sitting next to me and lowering the lightsaber for closer inspection. "Behold a weapon that can last virtually forever. It doesn't run on a charge or battery, because it recycles its own power."

            "…How, and what's the catch?"

            "The blade is different from any we've used before," she explained. "It's not a concentrated laser laced with plasma, but a concentrated laser laced with plasma plus a fusion core."

            I blinked. "You're holding a nuclear glowstick?"

            That got a laugh. "In a manner of speaking. 'Fusion' is just the word that comes to mind. Technically it doesn't work out, but it's the word that sums up what the process is kind of like. I don't know all the science…I just come up with the ideas and put the pieces together."

            I tilted my head, looking suspiciously at the weapon. "So the energy it gives off is also the energy it uses to recharge itself?" I frowned when she nodded. "But it doesn't make sense…if this is the product of System and Union technology combined, wouldn't System and Union scientists have realized this before a crack team of underworld scientists and made them standard issue?"

            "No, because it's more than just a combination of technologies. The combination is just where we start." She ignited the blade, a sizzling red spike. "From there, black market moguls like Starkov upgrade the upgrades. It's kind of an arms race, but it's a living."

            It had been such a long time since I'd heard the gentle hum of a lightsaber, and I admit I was disappointed when she deactivated the weapon. My mind went back to the more memorable battles of my career, and I found that I sorely missed the thrills of combat on a level that was far too high for anyone who hoped to be a member of normal society. "Does this technology expand beyond conventional weapons? Meaning, armor, internal units…?"

            "Oh, yes." She hopped up and set the blade on her dresser. "There's one thing in particular I think you'd like. It'll make your habit of melting into flames a lot easier…and more potent."

            Ah yes, melting into flames. It was my favorite trick: short-range teleportation, but with an attitude. "You, my dear, are a genius."

            "Just doing my part." She came back to the bed, resting against the headrest. "I figure the Serpent will have things like this, so we'd better have them also."

            That was a kick in the chest. "You're thinking about fighting the Serpent?"

            "Aren't you?"

            I blinked a few times. "Well, yes, but I didn't think you would exactly approve…"

            "I told you, back in that cave." She looked me solidly in the eye. "We'll never be truly safe as long as he's alive."

            "He doesn't know that we're alive. He doesn't know where we are."

            "For now. How long will it be before he makes the connection? By then he may have agencies working for him everywhere."

            They were the very arguments I'd been using against myself, and Teytha had just shot them all down. "Then we do need to do something."

            "I don't want to go looking for him," she clarified. "I just…"

            "You want to be ready for when he comes here. I know. I do too."

            "Do you have any ideas? I mean, big ideas…not just making weapons."

            "First we need to talk to Villandrov. If he can't help us, then we'll just go to someone who can."

            "What do you expect Villandrov to do against the Gold Serpent?"

            "Nothing." I closed my eyes, resting my head on my pillow. "I expect him to give us the resources we need to fight against the Gold Serpent."

            "Let's hope he remembers how grateful he was," Teytha said, pulling the blankets over her.

            I hoped so, too, though I wasn't overly worried. If Villandrov had forgotten his dues, I'd just show him what I thought of ingrates.

            Teytha's willingness to fight Kou Cao surprised me primarily because throughout our last great adventure she had been the one most adamant about getting the hell out of Dodge. I must admit, she had a point. Instead of listening to the voice of reason, Gredam, Mortar and I had continued our quest for vengeance, dragging her along for the ride. In the end Gredam died and the rest of us got our butts kicked by Mega Man X, the stiffest tightass ever to wear blue armor, and his buddy Zero, who when he's not a crazy bloodthirsty lunatic can be a pretty cool guy. Teytha's fears went a bit deeper, because of the four of us going into Seraph Castle she was the only one to know what death was like. You'll recall (and if you don't, take a Ginko, it wasn't that long ago I said it) that around the time Sigma said, "I think I'll kill everyone in nasty ways," the Traitor was trying to butcher everyone affiliated with our assassin unit lest our story get out. He caught up to us in Megacity 5's Chancellor District, and in the resulting skirmish he killed a number of our surviving ranks. When Teytha moved to defend the rest of us, Chartreuse simply eviscerated her.

            The story ends happily, of course, and ironically because of the Traitor himself. As Kou Cao, he arranged for me to meet with Gredam, and sent the two of us to a junkyard where we found Teytha's body among the wreckage (it had been planted there). I'd removed her control chip when she'd fallen, and after repairing the body and reinstalling her mind she was nearly as good as new. She was, however, a bit averse to the thought of leaving us again, and so to hear her planning to confront the man who'd once killed her was a bit surprising. Though, I might add, it was pleasantly surprising.

            Durin's intelligence network served our purposes in two gargantuan ways. The first was giving me a chance to observe Zade in action—the man is a master at his trade. Infiltrations, counterintelligence, sabotage, tax evasion, you name it Zade can do it. Our mutual hatred of Kou Cao was revealed during Durin's missions, and once Zade even let slip that "If any bloke here's both foolhardy and brave enough to fight that snake, I'll be the first to take up arms with 'em."

            The second reason like the first involved allies, but in a much more surprising way. Again travel back to the period in time when I was a freelance spy. A prodigy of mine was a Reploid named Diavus. An all-purpose sniper and spook, Diavus had followed us all the way into Seraph Castle, where we'd lost communications. Ever since my spying days, I've kept a heavily encoded message system online, and I realized quite suddenly that I'd forgotten to check it. Using Durin's resources I was able to undo my own codes and found a single message.

            Diavus had not died at Hunter hands, as I'd feared. In fact, he was still operating inside Megacity 5 and had a whole shitload of dirt on the Serpent and his recent activities. None of it was enclosed in the letter, though from my associate's hurried style I predicted that it was some kind of risk for him to be using the message system and that he wanted to finish as soon as possible. Of course, I realized, he would be in danger—a Maverick living in Megacity 5 so soon after our defeat there? But before I could exfiltrate him I needed funds, and to pass time I merely made him aware of our existence, not telling him where we were but requesting whatever he had on Kou Cao.

            "Diavus?" Mortar said incredulously that night. "You're shitting me."

            "It was his account, and Diavus knows how to keep those safe," I replied as the phone rang. I frowned. The only people to call us anymore were telemarketers.

            "If we could get Diavus out of there," Teytha said thoughtfully, "do you think he would help us fight the Serpent?"

            "Not you, too!" Mortar moaned.

            "If we paid him enough," I answered her, raising the receiver. "Yyyyyello." Five seconds later I hung up and looked at my two companions, smiling like whoever the hell it was that conquered Rome.

            "Gospodin Villandrov has returned."

            Zacharias Villandrov is a regal looking man, usually decked out in a sublime white suit that makes his short-cropped blond hair and cold blue eyes all the more striking. None of these traits, however, would have saved him from the assassin who'd come to kill him over a nonexistent gambling debt. Fortunately, that assassin had been felled by another assassin—me. Once Villandrov realized who I was, he apologized blusteringly for delaying me so long and arranged an immediate meeting.

            Villandrov made it rich in energen mining, searching for the crystal that's innate makeup serves as a power source for the modern era's most advanced machines. He'd uncovered a massive deposit in Siberia, and it was suspected that he knew of several other smaller deposits in the area.

            "This project of yours," Villandrov said, puffing on a cigar and frowning. "Whatever it is—and I don't really care to know—it sounds like you're coming to me for resources."

            "I'm calling in a favor," I replied simply, puffing on of all things a curved black pipe. Don't ask me where I picked up this habit, but it does wonders for relaxation. I felt like Sherlock Holmes backing a criminal into a corner, when in fact I was a poor ex-militant begging for scraps off a rich man's table. "I need money, Mr. Villandrov. I need an account to finance this project…a project which, by the way, will work out quite well for you and your…under the counter associates."

            Villandrov drew a sharp breath, covering it with unconvincing laughter. "You have strange ideas, Mr. Stralnikov."

            "No stranger than Kou Cao's, and he's doing all right."

            This time Villandrov nearly choked on the smoke, and I grinned. I had the rich man by the balls. Any private black market entrepreneur like Villandrov was a natural enemy of the encroaching Serpent network. They traded with each other, sure, but Villandrov and those like him knew assimilation was the ultimate end for them with someone like Kou Cao on the loose. I, however, had just more or less confirmed my intention to challenge the Serpent, and thus I was Villandrov's…business partner, if you may.

            "It can't be tied to me," Villandrov finally said. "The more you desecrate the serpent's den the more curious his people will be as to where you got your teeth. If they learn it was me, I'll have every barbarian Vile and Meltdown Rattler the world knows of at my throat."

            I frowned, a bit miffed. Meltdown Rattler was a marauding raider, and while he made for good news stories—better than who Marcus Raleigh got caught in bed with, anyway—it was the slight on Vile that annoyed me most. Before I was in Seraph Castle and before I was a spy I trailed after the Maverick ranks, helping them on a level that let them know I was an asset to be used, and thus I enjoyed some protection while the Traitor hunted me. In that period of time I encountered Vile on many an occasion, and "barbarian" is so not the word for Vile. "Malevolent emissary of Hell" perhaps, but not "barbarian." Vile was the man. You'd just be sitting there, and Vile would kick you in the nuts. And you wouldn't do anything, because this was Vile, and you knew he would dismember you with hooks if you opened your mouth to complain. I learned many a tool of the trade watching old Boba do his job, and for someone to degrade him to "barbarian" was bothersome.

            I doubted, however, that the human Villandrov would share my opinion. "Don't worry. A friend of mine's into the global accounting thing. He can easily hide the transactions."

            Villandrov thought for a moment, and then produced an envelope from his desk. "I'm going to transfer some money to your personal account, Stralnikov. In this envelope you'll find information about a specific plot of land near Yekaterinberg. Use the money I give you and buy it. When surveyors—hired by me, of course—come to inspect the land they'll make a startling discovery."

            He handed me the envelope and I looked up at him. I'd been hoping for this but I hadn't been sure he'd do it. "You mean…"

            "After you find the energen," Villandrov went on, leaning on his desk, "I'll help you set up a company to manage your finances and take care of business aspects. At the same time information will leak that depicts a rivalry between you and I…a rivalry we'll have to keep up. Two energen barons in one area, duking it out in the markets. A decent cover story."

            "So let it be written," I said, standing to shake his hand. "Thank you, sir. I assure you it'll be money well spent.

            "Thank you, Stralnikov. You saved my life and now you may save my business. With any luck, a few years down the line I'll be thanking you again, this time for keeping Gold Serpent out of the European Union."

            I am not a businessman. I tell you this right off the bat because it's easier than making excuses for why I know little to nothing about what followed my meeting with Villandrov.

            Basically, what I know is that things played out like Villandrov promised they would. We bought the land and energen was indeed found there, but far more than I'd anticipated. Apparently Villandrov was serious about this rivalry thing. Fortune 2000 companies freaked the hell out at our "find" and quickly, under Villandrov's supervision, a tiny private company was established to manage our suddenly bursting accounts. To the public eye, however, Halo was an enterprise conceived solely by Valentin Volnin, my pal Mortar, who sat at the head of the company and personally took care of our finances. It was his global strategy game all right, but on a much more personal level.

            One of the first things we did with our newfound assets was bail out of our crappy apartment and find our own homes. Mortar instantly relocated to Moscow's more upbeat upper class district, where he could be the party animal I'd always suspected he was. Teytha and I decided to be a bit more secluded, taking over a former dacha in Yekaterinberg, my home city. Auratech had since moved out, which is fine with me. I have no love for a corporation that sold me to the Megacity System as cheap labor. The house is nice, but nothing fancy. It sits near a river, which is nice in the warmer months. We have no immediate neighbors but we aren't exactly in the middle of nowhere—town is five minutes east.

            Again, I don't know how all the economics worked out, but within three weeks after my meeting with Villandrov we were richer than we'd ever dreamed of being. I said as much to Teytha one night as we made use of our new home's Jacuzzi. I have always wanted one of these things and I am happy to report that even Reploids can use them without being violently electrocuted.

            "This is more like it," she agreed, perusing a magazine.

            "What's this?" I asked, sitting next to her. At first she seemed reluctant to show me, but seemed to overcome most of her embarrassment and let me take a peek. It was a magazine full of wedding dresses "Oh, I see…"

            "I'd just been thinking," she explained, feeling weird. "Thinking that I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing."

            "I've done a little research," I offered, and I meant the "little" part. "You're thinking of the traditional ceremony, when we'll probably go with a civil one."

            "So I don't have to wear one of these hulking monstrosities?"

            "Hell no, unless you—"

            But there was no "unless". Teytha threw the magazine away from her onto the floor, breathing a huge sigh of relief and letting the soothing warm water slide up past her shoulders. "Thank God." She rested her head against my chest and I ran a hand through her wet hair. "So what do we do?"

            "I think…just get a magistrate, a judge or something, and we pick a spot and he marries us."

            "So it's that easy?" she asked hopefully.

            "Oh, I think Mortar'll find some way to make it embarrassing," I admitted, sinking lower into the water myself.

            She nestled against me and shivered despite the temperature. "It's so weird."

            "I thought that'd be what made it interesting."

            "It will be," she agreed, smiling despite herself. "But…I don't know why, but…"

            "I do. We grew up in a world where Reploids were less than humans, where their lives were less important. We were told our emotions weren't real. Love was foolish. Marriage was more ridiculous than Satan teaching Sunday School. Now we're far away from that, but…"

            "We still can't let go," she finished, sighing again. "Is marriage ridiculous?"

            I grinned right at her. "No more ridiculous than blowing up a floating base and occupying a Hunter stronghold, and infinitely more healthy."

            She grinned back, her fears put down. "When you put it that way, it sounds like a cakewalk."

            "Only so much more important than a cakewalk," I added, ruffling her hair.

            She kissed my chest and closed her eyes. "Thank you."

            "Eh…? For what?"

            "For giving me the life I've always wanted."

            Well how do you come back from that? "Believe me, T," I attempted anyway, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. "It was my pleasure."

            Back in the realm of seriousness and danger (but rejoice not; mushy as the preceding scene was, it was not the Romantic Incident #2 that you have doubtless come to dread) I got a response from my American agent, Diavus. It was not pretty.

            Gold Serpent set us up to use nukes on Megacity 5's military structures. To us, we were destroying Army racists and Hunter traitors, but to Kou Cao we were destabilizing authority for a brief period of time, which was his intention all along. During the period when order in the city crashed, crime skyrocketed on levels previously unheard of, all of it coordinated by the Serpent's top staff. Immense favors were done to woo and impress potential allies, and almost overnight the Serpent's network had grown to encompass all black markets running through the entire Megacity System.

            For those of you who have never experienced the feeling that comes with learning that your actions allowed your arch nemesis to take over a third of the world, let me tell you that it's like having a jigsaw rip through your torso, even worse than an episode of Who's the Boss. None of us took this information well, but Diavus wasn't done. From what he could tell, once Kou Cao had solidified his power in the System, he would doubtlessly be looking for other venues, and thus other nations. The Megacity Army, despite renewed pledges to the contrary, seemed entirely incapable of finding the Traitor or his chief associates, and thus his network remained secure.

            "He's coming," Mortar observed. "That's more or less what this note is saying." I hate it when Mortar is right.

            Diavus went on to express his joy at learning we were still alive and again requested an escape route. I was not entirely worried about him being a spy for Kou Cao, since as a survivor of Seraph Castle Diavus would sooner be on the Serpent's hit list than on his payroll, so I began to arrange an exfiltration. In the meantime I told Diavus to get whatever remaining info he could about suspected Serpent affiliates.

            It turned out that my waiting was a good thing. I still worked closely with Durin, and one day I came across an intercepted series of communiqués that indicated Serpent forces were targeting a specific ex-Maverick. There was a photo involved in the envelope Durin gave me, and sitting on my bed that night I reeled at the image of a bug-eyed frog Reploid flanked by a skunk and a gorilla. "I know him!" I declared.

            "Who?" Teytha asked, hurrying over to read over my shoulder. "My god, it's Greenback!"

            Greenback was one of the technicians who built our airship, the Gallagher, and also made functional our nuclear warheads. He's one of the smartest of the living technowizards, and I'd feared him lost with his boss Revolver when Gallagher went down. To this day I do not know what Greenback did to piss off Gold Serpent, and the frog himself isn't telling, though the gorilla seems to hint that it had something to do with Pixie Sticks.

            My next communiqué to Diavus told him to buy a plane ticket to Moscow only after securing Greenback and his two companions. A week later I arrived at Shermetyevo Airport for the third time in my new life with Teytha and Mortar, and here we greeted our old friends. Diavus was first out of the terminal, looking far more haggard than I've ever seen him. It seemed as though sleep had been denied to him in the months after Seraph Castle, and he looked like a man who was forever on the run. Greenback was as bouncy and odd as ever, snagging a fly from a nun's head and accidentally pulling her veil off with it. Stepping forward to clean up that mess was the skunk, Pierre, whose blustering apologies evidently included something ridiculously profane because the next thing we knew he was laying on the floor in pain with a baseball bat between his legs. Nuns these days. The gorilla, Ludwig, helped him to his feet and would have blustered more apologies had we dragged the motley crew off.

            "They killed Gerritt," was the first thing Diavus said to me when we were free of the airport.

            I blinked. "Who's Gerritt?"

            "One of us." Diavus glowered. "A fellow Maverick."

            "Keep it down," I warned, looking around nervously. "You both escaped, then?"

            Diavus nodded, shivering. "I was going to bring him here, but they found us."

            "They?"

            "Who else?"

            It was as I'd feared—Kou Cao was eliminating everyone from Seraph Castle, but for what reason I had no idea. "We'll stop them."

            "Is that your goal?" Diavus challenged me. "How are you going to do it this time? Bio weapons instead of nuclear ones?"

            It was a slap in the face, but one I deserved after leading the Mavericks into that suicide mission. "It's different this time, Diavus. We're the defenders, not the attackers. And this time we're calling the shots."

            "Gredam called the shots last time," Diavus pointed out mercilessly. "Look what happened to him."

            I'll never be able to properly describe how much my comrade's words haunted me. Gredam had indeed been the acting commander of the Mavericks. Granted it was only in Sigma's temporary absence, but Gredam had still enjoyed a command equal to his leader's and could have changed any aspects of the plan had he wanted to. If we went to battle again, there was the risk of someone falling to enemy fire. Would it be me this time? Teytha? Mortar? Either of them would be a lethal blow to my mental stability. I couldn't tell myself that we were really just defenders, either, because by naming our firm Halo we more or less advertised to one particular Maverick Hunter our location. We owed Zero our lives and would pay him back however he asked. I knew this, and it scared me. What if he asked us to go looking for Chartreuse, the very thing we were trying to avoid?

            For the moment, though, worrying was not going to accomplish anything, and there was much to accomplish. We quickly bought and established a garage for Greenback, Pierre and Ludwig, and I was glad to have the gearhead back on my team. Like Teytha, the frog worked closely with Sergei Starkov's people. Speaking of them, our next action was to buy out both Starkov's and Durin's networks, merging them under our ragtag private army while making it a financial godsend to the former masters of the formerly separate rings. Starkov and Durin now worked for us. Anatoliy Gorov, the Hunter Commander, remained blissfully ignorant to it all, and I wonder if I could have bought him over, too, but didn't push my luck. I didn't leave all the authorities alone, though. Every spy needs a corrupt cop or two. Mine is Hans Richter, a high-ranking inspector. When I met him I used a carefully proven scientific process to determine if he was the right man for the job.

            "How come your name's not Richterov or something Russian?" I asked.

            Richter looked at me, deadpan. "Because it isn't."

            He was perfect.

            Next I went about building more of an inner circle. Diavus was of course willing to help, despite his constant warnings of caution. Zade was positively delighted at the opportunity to castrate the Serpent, especially when Diavus told him that he'd more or less confirmed Dynamo's membership in Kou Cao's ranks.

            When all the wheeling and dealing was done I was somewhat depressed, because now I had nothing to do but worry. When Teytha noted my restlessness one night I told her what Diavus had said to me at the airport, and she likewise revealed her own apprehensions. She, at least, had some answers for her own questions.

            "Think of it this way," she asked. "Do we really deserve to be alive now?"

            "Oh, don't say this…"

            "No, think about it. Maybe we're supposed to be alive, whether we deserve it or not, to stop this guy."

            "Noooo," I moaned. "The only people who say stuff like that are the people who eventually die."

            She laughed. "I think you overestimate your supposed immortality. Look." She leaned her forehead against mine. "We could just sit here and ignore the problem, but eventually it'll come to bite us in the ass. Or, we could prepare now and be ready for him. It's not a question of should we do it, but how should we do it."

            "I know…" I admitted with a sigh. "But it just seems like…like we've waited so long for a safe life, and now we're zooming past it to go back to the life of danger we hated."

            "We hated that life, Malevex," she said sagely. "This is a new life, a whole new playing field. I know there's danger," she conceded, "and so…" A little shiver of shyness took her but it passed quickly. "I'd rather start this life as your wife, and not your fiancée."

            It doesn't take much, with her, to make me smile. "I talked with Judge Axis. He's fine with it."

            "Axis…?"

            "Yeah, he's a Reploid."

            "Reploid judges…I love this place." She smiled, taking out my apprehensions just like that. "So we're gonna do this…?"

            "You think I'm letting you out of it now?" I smiled back, embracing her tightly. "You already said yes."

            A happy laugh escaped her. "I'm looking forward to it."

            "Thank you." It was her turn to ask for what. "For giving me the hope I always wanted."

            She laughed again, grinning evilly. "Despair, and I'll kick your ass."

            "Yes, dear."

            We had the money. We had the members. We had the weapons. We had the intel. We had the resources. All we needed now was a name.

            "Killer Mongoose network," Zade said, matter-of-factly.

            "What?" said the rest of us in unison.

            "Don't mongooses eat snakes?" the blue-haired mercenary asked quizzically.

            "We're not calling ourselves the Mongooses," Diavus growled.

            "I don't know," Mortar mused. "Imagine how much it would suck to be beat by something called the Killer Mongoose network."

            "I think that'd be going too far for a joke," I put in.

            "Advocates of Silva!" Zade tried again.

            "Who the hell is Silva?" Diavus growled. He did a lot of that.

            "Ain't he the Hindu god of death?"

            "That's Shiva," I corrected. "And I'd rather not be an advocate of anyone. We're in this on our own."

            "What about the Black Ankh?" Teytha asked, out of nowhere.

            "We're not calling ourselves the Black Ankh," Diavus growled, apparently before he even bothered to take in the name, because he quickly blinked and shook his head. "I mean, no, that's…"

            "It sounds nifty," Mortar finished. "Whatsit mean?"

            "I've thought about it already," she explained, needlessly. "In Egypt, an Ankh symbolized life. We will try to preserve our lives, but only by seeking the death of another, hence the "black" part."

            "Very symbolic," I smiled.

            "A soldier, gearhead and a scholar," Zade smirked. "Quite a girl you've got there, mate."

            "Just remember that I outrank you," Teytha replied, smirking back.

            "The Black Ankh," Diavus repeated, looking up at the ceiling. "Jesus, that sounds cool."

            "Seems official now," Mortar said quietly.

            "Indeed." I looked around at my four coconspirators. We, plus Durin, Starkov, Villandrov, Hans Richter, Greenback, and a slew of other couriers were about to embark on a project that mere months before I would have shot myself for thinking about. "We're about to take on Goliath with a slingshot, my friends, and none of us is named David."

            "I don't have a cover name yet," Zade offered.

            "Dude, you're ruining my deep serious speech." I smiled and rested against the back of the chair nonetheless. "Ah, hell, you all know what you're getting into. We'll keep this simple, and we'll keep it subtle. We'll make the Serpent know he's not wanted here, or anywhere else outside the System. Then it's up to General Virdelko to flush him out." I looked from person to person. Diavus, jittery and grumpy as ever but still determined. Zade, the eccentric mercenary who in his spare time was God. Mortar, the most steadfast friend a guy could ask for. And Teytha, well, you know how I feel about her. "Then let's do this."

            We each raised a glass in a motion of unity. It was as official as it was going to get. The Black Ankh would now begin positioning itself to stop the Gold Serpent network in its tracks. My short days of walking the straight and narrow were caput. But to tell the truth, it's not like it was a catastrophic loss.

            Mortar caught me on his way out. "I think you know what I want to say," he began as I closed the door behind us.

            I inhaled slowly. "Probably."

            A look of ambivalence flashed across Mortar's wizened face. "God knows what's coming, Malevex, and I trust you, but…"

            I nodded, unable to meet his eyes. "I know."

            In that unit of mine, strange relationships had developed. Mortar, while only as old as the rest of us, had become a sort of father figure for Teytha. She'd confided in him long before she'd confided in me, and he'd kept up his protective role well into the Seraph Castle madness. Now his "daughter" was both getting married and going into a situation that might kill her. He couldn't have been all that collected.

            "I know we need to act," Mortar said firmly. "But I want everyone coming out of this alive." His voice more or less forced me to look at him. "And you know who I mean by everyone."

            I winced. I knew. Mortar cared only about Teytha, himself and me. If worse came to worse, we would bail on the others and save ourselves. It seems like such cowardice to me, but there's also another law in consideration here: there are no heroes among thieves. We are all thieves—mercenaries, smugglers, info dealers, all of us are black market. We know the risks. We know the odds. And deep down, we're all stark raving mad. I doubt very much that we won't be able to take care of ourselves.

            Mortar then smiled and winked as he walked to the door. "And good luck Saturday. Try not to forget the whole vow."

            I winced again. In a civil wedding service, pretty much anything goes. But Teytha and I had already thrown out pretty much every formality in the book, and Mortar had declared that if we didn't at least come up with vows of some sort, then we might get off completely un-embarrassed and the whole thing'd be worthless. Bastard. Teytha refused to say a damn thing about her vows, but I gathered she was having just as hard a time coming up with something as I was.

            "Your support," I said as we left, my voice dripping with sarcasm, "is touching."

            "As this whole shebang. Really, I didn't think you'd go this far…" His voice dropped. "But I think it means a lot to her that you did."

            "It just seemed like I was supposed to do it," I said lamely.

            "You're not supposed to do anything anymore," Mortar laughed. "That's what's cool about being us. But don't worry. I'm sure things'll end up just fine. For all of us."

            I knew what he meant but raised my eyebrow anyway. "Planning a wedding of your own, old man?"

            His reaction surprised the hell out of me—he actually blushed. I mean, seeing Mortar blush is like seeing Mother Theresa turn around and flip off the Pope. "N-no…I mean…I don't move as fast as you two did."

            "Mortar," I said, when I had recovered to the point where I could think again. "You devil."

            Saturday came faster than it ever had before. The location we'd decided on would seem weird to anyone but us. One of Yekaterinberg's tourist attractions was an old citadel styled after one used in the Tsarist era (like the Kremlin, only a hell of a lot more dreary in appearance), and we thought the place kicked all manner of ass. Judge Axis was a brisk, businesslike but likable Reploid who promised us that anything we did, he'd have seen it before.

            The audience was tiny, lined only with faces we knew. Mortar stood on Teytha's side, being the "father", while Diavus served as a sort of "best man" on my side. Zade stood to the side with Laurel, a good friend of Teytha's from within Starkov's agency. She, too, had pledged to help the Black Ankh in its quest. Greenback, Pierre and Ludwig had asked to be present, Greenback having a soft spot for these sort of things and his companions doubtlessly hoping for booze afterwards. The most obvious new addition was the woman standing near Mortar, a fiery Reploid Mortar had introduced only as "Rose".

            Teytha and I took a risk in our attire. Since any clothes we'd seen struck us as over the top, we opted to do this in the clothing that symbolized our lives together so far—our battle armor. Axis, Rose and Laurel were the only ones who might have been offended at our identities—if the armor was enough to give them away, which it really wasn't—but Teytha trusted Laurel, Rose had obviously passed Mortar's tests, and Axis didn't bat an eyelash one way or another, merely beginning to do the job he did every day of his life.

            But there was nothing ordinary about this for us. Teytha, her alabaster chestplate, gauntlets and boots—all now rimmed with gold—standing out against her blue bodysuit, looked prettier than I'd ever seen her. My own armor consists of a heavy chestplate with shoulder guards, gauntlets, boots and a waistguard, all of it ebon black over a bodysuit of very very dark violet. It looked like Axis was joining a Devil with an Angel, though neither description truly fit either of us.

            I don't know exactly what Axis was saying for most of the ceremony, because I was too busy watching a certain pair of blue eyes behind ebon locks. Neither of us broke eye contact once while the judge spoke. There was something there, something that even though existed in the presence of others was still our own private property. Never once in my wildest dreams did I ever dream I'd be doing this, and neither had she. For whatever reason, when this was over we'd be left with a sense of togetherness even greater than what we had already. Maybe there is something to that symbolism garbage people talk about, after all.

            All too soon it was time for me to talk. I'd memorized what I planned to say—being a walking computer makes things like that easy—and kept my gaze focused on my bride, taking her hands in mine. I snuck one glance at Mortar, but far from being his smirking self my old friend actually seemed choked up. I steeled myself but the words came out a lot easier than I thought they would.

            "Well, Anya," I began, remembering to use her cover name, "I don't know exactly how we got from a snowy balcony to a dark citadel, but I'm glad we made it. Usually, I guess, humans talk about their conceptions of love, and sometimes they know what they're doing, so here I go." My smile came naturally, and by some twist of fate I was actually enjoying the moment. "It's hard for humans to tell whether or not they're in love, and doubly so for Reploids, who aren't even sure if they can love. For humans, many say it's just a chemical reaction that stimulates attraction, but that can't be all that love is. If it were, we wouldn't be standing here today.

            "We're not capable of weird chemical reactions, but I love you just the same. I know it because, given my…turbulent childhood, I wouldn't lay down my life for anybody. All my life has been a game of survival, and failure was not an option. But for you, Anya, I'd die with a smile on my face. You're the one person on this earth I'll risk everything to protect. I don't care what comes at us in the future, be it man, Reploid or Olympian god, it won't lay a finger on you." She squeezed my hands, evidently quite touched.

            "And finally…the only time I'm truly happy—the only time I feel alive—is when you're at my side. That's more than camaraderie. That's love. And I'll fight anyone who dares say it's impossible." Exchanging rings would have been empty to us, and instead we had decided to exchange gifts, both of which happened to be weapons. Diavus opened a red box and handed me a beam scimitar. It was essentially a lightsaber, but built in the manner she'd described to me days earlier. Teytha carried and used two swords in combat, the first another scimitar and the second a conventional rod saber. I figured it was time to replace the latter with something more presentable. The hilt was all gold, and done in the likeness of the eagles she liked. The blade's curve was an outstretched wing, while the other stuck out horizontally in a form of a cross-guard. When she saw the weapon her smile grew all the larger, not eager, not greedy, not embarrassed, just happy.

            "Take this blade, and keep it as close to you as you are to me." I pressed the weapon into her hands. She held it carefully, only briefly examining it before turning it over to Mortar, who then retreated backwards. "I love you, Anya, now and forever." As I said the words I felt my eyes water slightly. It was a very strange feeling—I have never shed tears of emotion. The only other time I may have been driven to do so was when Teytha had died, but the grief was too strong to allow time for tears. Now, though, the joy of the moment proved stronger than that strongest grief had.

            "I don't think I can define love," Teytha began, taking back my hands. "But I can say what you are to me." She fought past her own surge of emotion, though tears didn't come. "All my life you've been there for me, a North Star on very stormy waters. When I was the walking dead, you gave me reason to live. When I joined the darkness it was you who brought me back to the light." It amazed me how easily she spoke of the worst moments of her life, and even more how poetic she could be.

            "Whenever I've been afraid, I find comfort with you. Whenever I've been in pain, you've been there to heal my wounds. And in the darkest of hours, when everything looks lost, you emerge from the nightmare unscathed, saving me with yourself. I trust you. I need you." She tightened her grip, moving just slightly closer. "I love you."

            It was all she needed to say to convey her message. Laurel stepped forward, offering her a cane. It was quite long, composed of a metal as sleek and black as my armor and topped off with a silver eagle's head. "Since you seem to have chosen our family crest," she said with a tiny grin, handing over the cane to me, "I offer you this. Let me see you standing there with it, leading us to a better future. And if someone gives you any garbage, they'll be in for a surprise." She leaned forward and whispered as the cane switched hands. "This is your nuclear glowstick."

            I laughed quietly, examining the finely crafted cane briefly beforeDiavus took the device from me, holding it respectfully. He had a strange look on his face, as though he found all of this both corny and intriguing at the same time.

            The fact that Judge Axis observed the transfer of weapons with such nonchalance gave testament to what kind of madness he saw on a normal day. Not wasting any time the magistrate spoke again in his commanding voice, and this time I listened. "Vladimir Stralnikov, Anya Krilova…by the power vested in me by the laws of Russia and the European Union, I pronounce you husband and wife."

            If he said anything about kissing I didn't notice or care. We did it anyway because it seemed wrong not to. There was something quite final about that moment, but final in a good sort of way. It was like an unseen contract had officially been signed, reading: "now you two are stuck together till the day you die", and that, people, was actually the most reassuring feeling to ever wash over my cold metal body.

            Judge Axis shook both our hands after the ceremony, congratulated us, and went on his merry way. The rest of us lingered in the citadel for a bit. "That was so nice," Greenback croaked, his big eyes still watery. "Greenback hopes he can do as good for his own special frog one day."

            Teytha and I both grinned hugely—a side effect of simply being near Greenback. "No doubt you will," I assured him. "And she'll be one lucky…uh…frogette."

            "I'm proud of you," Mortar said, hugging us both. "This here was a more worthwhile experience than anything you've ever done."

            "You should try it," I suggested quietly, slapping Mortar on the back. "How about we find Miss Rose a ring?"   

            "How about you bite me hard?" Mortar said, in the exact same fatherly tone of voice. I laughed loudly.

            "It makes me wonder why more Reploids don't do this," Laurel said, pulling back her long green hair.

            "Well I highly recommend it," Teytha smiled, letting me slip an arm around her shoulder. "They don't know what they're missing."

            Eventually our small audience filed out. "Zade, Diavus," I said, shaking each of their hands before they left. "I appreciate you two dealing with all this."

            "Not a problem at all, mate," Zade said brightly, his spiky blue hair in sharp contrast to the slick suit he'd donned for the occasion. I smirked at the realization that he looked sharper than I did. "If nothin' else I can blackmail ya. I've got your vows and your voice completely memorized. Yeah I know," he finished with a cheeky grin. "I'm a bastard."

            "Get in touch with us," Diavus said, somewhat calm for once. "But, you know…take your time."

            "Out with you," I ordered, shooing them. "And take your dark thoughts with you."

            "Eye of the beholder, mate!" Zade called back, saluting as he exited. "Eye of the beholder!"

            "What a crew," Anya Stralnikova observed, when we were alone. We stood together on a mosaic in the center of the room. We were probably being overly generous with the following description, but it looked kind of like an ankh.

            "Yeah. And they're our crew." I grinned. "I couldn't ask for a better one."

            "Me neither," she agreed, resting her hands on my shoulders. "So…husband. What now?"

            My own hands wound around her waist, drawing her close. "Whatever my wife desires."

            "You learn fast," she smirked. I looked past her around the dim chamber and pictured, almost involuntarily, how it would look like during a court ceremony during the time period the building was designed to imitate. Spectral musicians played a slow melody, and we moved in step to the phantasmal tunes. "Tonight," Teytha continued, resting her head against my shoulder, "…there is no Black Ankh."

            I tilted my wife's head up to kiss her. "And tonight, tomorrow and forevermore, there will be no Gold Serpent." We kissed again and tightened our hold on each other, moving silently across the citadel floor. Tonight, there was only us.

            We must have looked so strange to the phantasms. A hornless devil and a winged angel, dancing to nonexistent music in a rented castle. It hardly seemed like the proper place to begin a new life, but to the two of us nowhere else would ever suffice. The moment, the location, the situation…it was all perfect.

            Anything else would have been too normal.

            There you have it, friends, Romans, countrymen. The story of how three Reploids went from being displaced assassins to regular smucks to soldiers in a global turf war. HBO is just dying for stuff like this. I'm not wholly sure what our gameplan's gonna be, but it's not like I'd tell you that, anyway.

            That does raise a hairy question, the one every Bond villain has had to face: now that you know my fiendish plans, what do I do with you? Do I feed you to sharks with lasers on their heads? Do I lock you in a chamber and leave you to starve to death, eventually cannibalizing your comrades in a bloody primal slaughter?

            Nah, I'm not that nice. Instead I'll rely on the honor system. You go on, get out of here. You've got a mighty juicy story, there. The press'd pay you a mint for it. But you can't tell anyone. Yeah, that's a hell of a catch, isn't it? You see, right about now a fella named Durin will have finished compiling a list of your names, addresses, close relations, their addresses, and everything that might be fun for me to hammer you on if you choose to break my trust. Suffice to say, you'll be visited by a few large men named Vito, who will know which knee is the bad one.

            Or if I'm feeling really cruel, you'll get a call from your significant other telling you they've left you for an Australian mercenary with record times.

            But vile threats aside, it was fun talking to ya. We should do it again sometime. What's that…? Eh, you're probably right. I only have so many Vitos to go around, after all. So continue to live out your dull everyday lives, and leave the dark alleys to sleazebags like us. We'll take care of things.

            Dasvidanya.