The Social Welfare Agency has long been a controversial organization. Employing girls as young as nine and as old as seventeen and ruthlessly training them, they do the Italian government's dirty work. Assassinations, investigations, infiltration, and other such odd jobs were considered a way of life for these junior operatives who were taught to kill mercilessly. But for the older males who supervised the Agency's "child assassins", it was hardly a regular day at the office.
In some instances, the men cracked under the pressure and fled their duties, only to be swiftly murdered. More than often, they treated their young protégées as if they were nonexistent, rarely resulting in a happy ending. So the handlers of Section Two tried their best to cope with their occupation.
But one such operative-supervisor pair had a much better idea of coping with the living tragedy they were enduring: by ignoring it at all costs...
SOLENNE
I don't know what the hell this rifle is called. Beretta CPS-70/80 or something. It's ugly and black and it has no shoulder strap thingie for me. Ciro said this would be good field practice to try using a weapon with no support. I think it's a pain in the ass.
We're standing outside in this dingy, smelly apartment hallway. There's a flickering light bulb and some crummy music coming from the door next to us. Ciro has some contacts who invited him to come to their party, but the guy (his name is Pasquale or something) is a scumbag, so we figured, "Hey, let's go to this guy's party, and shoot up the place!". The Agency said it would be fine, as long as we make sure everyone and everything gets killed. The place is in such a bad neighborhood that most of the residents who live in the apartments have seen lots of drive-bys.
Ciro's eyes tell me he's not exactly comfortable here either. He doesn't have a weapon, of course; I've always got to do all the work. Not that I mind — my brain says that I've accepted this as my life. It's just duty. I've grown to believe and accept that as a part of me.
But damnit, does duty ever suck.
Ciro signals to me with his fingers. Three. I've watched enough action movies to know that he's counting down to the assault. Now there's two. I feel a little more tense than I did when it was still at three. The absence of one more finger would mean that I have to burst into this room and start ripping people to shreds with bullets. This is so stupid. I don't even remember how to properly hold a gun.
Somewhere else in this apartment, Alessandro and Petrushka are hanging out as backup for us. It's good to have Petra around. She can do most of the work for me. Maybe I can act like I need help and dupe her into coming to my aid and finishing off most of the room. She's so thick she won't realize she'd been deceived, we'll get the "mission" done sooner, and I can return home, fix my nails, and go to bed. Then, tomorrow, Ciro and I will go have breakfast together in the Piazza Navona while the rest of the Agency's cute little assassins can spend their morning eating gross-as-all-get-out-food and punching holes in targets.
I feel a cockroach scuttle up my leg and swat at it. Damn thing.
"Are you ready?" Ciro whispers, though I'm not entirely sure why he needs to be so hush-hush. The music's loud enough for two people to carry on a conversation in the hall without being detected.
"Hold on a sec," I answer. I put the Beretta against the wall and I fix my ponytail.
Just as I finish tying it up again, the door handle creaks and Ciro shoves me into the room across from where we were standing. It's dark and gross and something's squeaking by my foot. On the other side, I hear my colleague babbling.
"Come inside, Ciro!" says some brute.
"Oh, no, no, I was looking for the bathroom. I'll be there in a sec."
"Well, the bathroom's in here, ain't it? Come in, come in..."
"I really... Ah, what the hell. Lead the way, Allegri."
'Lead the way, Allegri, it's not like there's a seventeen-year-old blonde chick standing in that room behind me waiting for the word to bust your buddy's party and kill everyone inside!', is more like it.
I find a lightswitch and flick it on. The room looks even worse than the hallway did. Double sleeper smack in the middle, old television, a video rack, and not much else. I pace to the rack and pick out a title idly, with not much intent to actually watch it, though that depends on how sidetracked Ciro gets.
I turn the tape over. It's a horror by the looks of it — Tenebrae? Old film. The rest of the display seems to be composed of similar movies. Whoever lived in this room before was a fan of gialli.
Something stinks in this room and it's not just the stench of dead rats in the walls...
Sometimes, I wish my sense of smell wasn't so enhanced. I mean, if I were any normal person, the stench would already be so overwhelming for me that it would make me want to puke. Now imagine that, but ten times more. Yeah, totally lame. It's taking all my self-control to keep it down.
I lean over the side of the bed and pull the sheet up. Ho-oly crap, dead body. No wonder Ciro and I got the all-clear to commence an assault — this place has seen numerous assaults before ours. And we haven't even begun yet.
"Jeez..." I whisper to myself, silently. My earpiece buzzes and jolts me. "Damnit, what the hell!?"
"Hey, Lana, you there?" Ciro asks.
"Obviously."
"Don't play smart. What's up?"
"Oh, nothing much. Hanging out in this dingy room and having a few drinks with the local rats. Found a corpse underneath the bed. And you?"
"You found a body?"
"Corpse; noun. 'A dead body, usually of a human being'," I recite smugly.
"Yeah, yeah. Well, ignore it and prepare yourself for the attack. I told Pasquale I forgot something in the car, so I'll be coming out to get you shortly. Sooner we get this shit done, the better..."
I stand up and shift through the drawer in the bedside table. A novella sits inside along with a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a knife. I turn the blade over in my hand, thoughtful, when the door opens.
"Let's do this," Ciro says, tossing the Beretta to me. I wonder idly how thick Allegri had to be to not notice it leaning against the wall, but when I follow Ciro back into the hallway, Petra's standing there holding her gun. She smiles at me. I don't smile back.
We wait on either sides of the door as our handlers veg out further down the hall. Alessandro's looking more bored than usual. I really doubt it's wise to smoke in this place. For all I know, in that mixture of scents there could be gasoline somewhere.
"In three... Two..."
Petra is a professional with this kind of crap. I'm not. Maybe that's why she's the golden girl — successful second-stage prototype. Follows all her orders. Trains every day. Blah, blah, blah. The only reason everyone adores her is because they can't recognize all the things that I'm good at. I can play guitar, I can sing, I can run... But they're just looking for the killers.
"One! Go!"
We burst through the door. Petrushka darts past me like a crazy red-topped blur while I stay in the doorway, shooting at the nearest participants. She swiftly caps about ten people and continues to make her rounds. Like I'd predicted, she was going to do most of the work. I doubt I'll have to even change out my ammo.
Some of the people have busted guns out, though. This could be bad.
...Real bad, as I just felt a bullet whiz past my face. I duck and slip and hit the ground hard. Doesn't hurt, though; I'm back on my feet in no time, now desperately firing at my assailant, whose weapon of choice is apparently a machete (I did say it was the ghetto). I miss a lot of times. Did I ever tell Ciro I wasn't cut out for this kind of work?
A bullet pierces the man's skull from behind and he lurches forwards at me. I hold him up with my rifle stock, using him as a makeshift shield from the oddly Western-style shootout commencing between Petra and some of the more adamant men in the room.
Guns are toys, I say. And these people are just playing with their toys. The only problem is, they don't know how to play nice with each other. That's how you get hurt with them. What makes it worse, these are grown-up toys, so nobody can trust an adult to buy one and not have a little too much fun with it because nobody's watching over that adult. Sure, you can legally obtain a firearm and they do the background checks and blah, blah, blah, but if that were really so effective...
...Then how come guns are still getting into the hands of irresponsible people?
I examine the shapes in the wooden floor as the room periodically lights up from gunfire.
Some bodies hit the ground with their own individual thuds, and I guess Petra's done 'leading' the assault. She walks over and bends down to look at me.
"Lana? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Did you kill everyone?"
"I think so..." Something tells me she's unsure. Ugh. "Ummm..."
I rise, knocking my makeshift shield back. I watch his face for a few moments. Although it is incredibly dead-looking, I still think I can hear his painful groans as he's dying.
&&
The Agency dispatches a clean-up crew to the location shortly after Alessandro contacts them, and we leave in separate cars. I get into the front seat of Ciro's Ferrari, not bothering with a seat buckle as he starts the engine.
We don't talk much. We usually never do after these mission-type escapades. But sooner or later, I know the inevitable will come...
"You smell like gunpowder for the first time in your life, Svetlana," he says, chuckling. I want to lash back at him but my willpower restrains me.
"I just need to bathe."
"Did you have fun?"
"As much fun as you can have in a place like that, I guess."
"Do you want to train more from now on?"
"No," I reply firmly. Hell no. "Not if it means I have to smell like this every single day. Now, when the explosive mixture of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal starts smelling like my perfume, maybe I'll reconsider."
Ciro bursts out laughing. He always thinks I'm funny. I don't mean to entertain him so much.
Something bothers me in the back of my mind until we arrive at the Agency. As I'm unloading the Beretta out of the trunk and closing it, I can hear something when things go quiet. It isn't the insects. Seeking to distract myself, I look at Ciro and ask, "You sure those dogs with the clean-up crew will do a good job?"
"If they don't, they'll get their asses kicked to curb." He lights a cigarette for the first time all night and takes a drag. "You want me to walk you to your dorm or do you want to handle it yourself?"
"I can do it fine without you. Have a nice night."
"You too, Lana."
We part ways. And as every little inch of my enhanced perceptions detect the smallest of bugs scuttling across blades of grass that are trudged upon by my shoes, and as I recall every bit of information accessible to me in a nanosecond of time, I still can't shake the bad feeling I've got as a dying man's last breaths haunt my mind. I'm not sure if it's conscience (most of the cretins here seem to be lacking in one) or pity or something just as weird.
And maybe that's why I'm not cut out for this job.
