Chapter 4: Would You Like Freedom Fries With That?

Part 17: Who Do I Have to Kill For This?

I was recalled back to headquarters again after the incident with the Squids was taken care of, and hailed a hero by at least the few who knew just what role I had played in recent events. But now I was to be given new training, perhaps to finally complete the training that had been cut short due to the onset of the Demon War.

Now my focus was going to be on the state of affairs in the worlds settled by humans themselves. No more dealing with one alien species or another at the moment. I spent another full year travelling back to Earth and learning more on the nuances of dealing with humans.

There was plenty to be done around there, to be certain, though. Always somebody that needed to be killed, secrets that needed to be discovered, and things that needed to be found. They were determined to put me to work on anything they couldn't figure out themselves that required a touch of subtlety, whether or not it was supposedly what I was intended for.

That was where I met Leo.

Leonardo Storace was a detective working with the law enforcement agency of planet Calabria. I was assigned to the planet in order to help crack down on a particularly insidious ring of organized crime going on around there.

"Looks like we'll be working together on this one, babe," he said. He was the sort of fellow that I had to wonder if he'd managed to artificially suspend his facial hair at a permanent five o'clock shadow, or if he had to work for it.

"So what are we looking at here?" I asked, taking a seat across from him.

"Our first case looks like a smuggling crackdown," he said. "There's a suspected tradeover near the spaceport. We think they're bringing in the goods from another planet, since tobacco doesn't grow on Calabria. It's catching them in the act that's the problem. But to do that, we need to figure out where it's coming from, and who is getting it when it gets here."

"And that's where we come in," I said.

Unfortunately, the increasingly widespread enactment of privacy laws was making it difficult on law enforcement. Calabria was a relatively new colony, and as such, it had never had any sort of surveillance devices. And the use of psychics for this sort of thing was not yet in much use. So in the gap, the mafia was having a field day.

Our investigation wound up bringing us to a seedy underground bar called Mario's, with an ancient 8-bit sprite on the placard. The place was thick with the smell of smoke and booze.

I whispered aside to Leo, "Why can't we just arrest everyone here?" We had to speak aloud because Leo didn't believe in getting implants. At least the place was noisy enough we wouldn't be readily overheard unless someone was standing directly behind us.

"That's not the point of this," he said. "We're looking to stop this at the source, not pick off the peons at the bottom. We've gotta follow it higher up to get what we're looking for."

So, I kept quiet, and set my implants to filter out the air I was breathing so that it didn't look like it bothered me. I wasn't used to being around smoke, and me coming in and coughing would be a dead giveaway I didn't belong here. Leo didn't seem to be bothered by it, though. I had to wonder just how much time he had spent trying to track down the cigarette smugglers.

While Leo went to make small talk with the girl tending the bar, I managed to get back to talk to Mario. He was an overweight man, shamelessly puffing on a cigarette in his own office.

"Hey there," the man said. "You're a sight for sore eyes. I haven't seen you around here before. Welcome to Mario's Bar. The name's Mario. What's your name, girlie?"

"Solly," I told him.

Mario replied, "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, sunshine. What can I do for you?"

"Oh, I was just wondering if you might be able to help me out," I said, putting on my best charm.

"Certainly," Mario said. "Anything for a fine dame such as yourself. What are you looking for?"

"Cigarettes," I said quietly, looking to the floor with feigned embarrassment.

Mario said, "Heh. No need to be shy about it here. We're hardly going to arrest you. Here." He pulled one out of his coat pocket and handed it to me. "Have one, on me."

I took it from him a little hesitantly, and he helpfully lit it for me. "Thank you," I said uncertainly. I'd never smoked before, and was certain that this would make it obvious that I was an outsider here, but I tried it nonetheless. Mario watched me like a grinning hawk all the while.

"Solly, you never smoked before, have you," he said with a chuckle. "Well, why didn't you say so?"

"Embarrassed," I murmured.

"Well, don't be. Everybody's got to start somewhere. Come over here and I'll show you how it's done."

I managed to get a lot of information about cigarettes out of Mario, but unfortunately none of it was at all what I had been looking for. When I met back up with Leo later, however, he wasn't at all disappointed.

"This is great," Leo said. "This means he's starting to trust you. He doesn't think you're anything but what you seem to be... a lovely young lady looking to put her feet in the darker side of life. Give it a bit and he might just tell you anything you want to know. Although it would probably go faster if you slept with him, I really wouldn't recommend it. Bad business, that."

I smirked. "I've never even slept with a man before."

"You haven't?" Leo said with a touch of surprise. "Guess they must've kept you too busy with work to think about that sort of thing."

I thought back on the short-lived relationship I had with Casey, and had to wonder just how much of that had been manipulated into place for the sake of my superiors wanting to conduct an experiment. "Yeah," I said distantly. "Pretty busy."

I'd been working on cracking the cigarette smuggling ring for almost a month, slowly working my way into Mario's confidence, when Leo came to me with a job that needed doing.

"You've been trained as an assassin, right?" Leo said.

I said, "Yeah, why? Have you got somebody who needs to die?"

Leo nodded. "A man by the name of Michelangelo Kim."

I raised an eyebrow. "Is he with the mafia?"

Leo shook his head. "Not this one. You don't need to worry about them getting upset at you over this, if you get caught."

I snorted. "Get caught?"

"Right, sorry," Leo said, chuckling. "Anyway, this guy's real scum. We think he's running a child sex slavery ring. Unfortunately, he's a slippery guy, and he's managed to avoid getting anything pinned on himself for years now. The one time it even got to court, they couldn't get anything to stick. That's where you come in."

I nodded. "Got it. Where can I find him?" He'd already told me more than I usually heard about my targets. In hindsight, I think he was trying to make sure that I didn't question too hard where the orders were coming from.

Leo gave me some locations where Mr. Kim was known to hang out at times, and left the job to me. This was my field of specialty, after all, and I meant to get it done as smoothly and expediently as possible.

I headed out to quietly stake out the locations, just watching for the moment, seeing his habits and who he was with. He was very self-confident, but not to the point of being overconfident. He never went anywhere without a pair of bodyguards. They'd probably have to be taken out as well. He even had a young boy test all his food before eating it, in case it was poisoned. He claimed that the boy was his nephew, but I wasn't so sure.

It wasn't my business to worry about dismantling the crime ring once the kingpin was removed. My job was just to remove him and leave the details to others. What happened after that was not my job.

So. I watched my target like a hawk, ever-present but invisible, for about a week before I found the best opportunity to do him. The local house of pleasure was sending over his favorite hooker to spend the evening with him. I quietly paid her off and send her on her way, then took her place.

I went up to the front door of Mr. Kim's home and rang the doorbell. One of the bodyguards came and answered it. "Hey, baby," he said. "Looking fine and all, but you're not the lady we expected."

"Sorry," I said. "Noah couldn't make it tonight. She's got a bad cough and didn't want to spread it to anyone. Hope she feels better in the morning! But I promise I'll make up for it." I moved my body in what I hoped was a properly seductive pose.

"Mmm," the bodyguard said. "Okay, babe, come right in."

I was brought in before Mr. Kim and his other bodyguard. "You're not who I ordered," Kim said. "Who are you?"

"My apologies, sir," I said, repeating my explanation about Noah's illness. "My name is Vita. I hope that I will meet with your satisfaction as Noah did."

"Alright, alright," Kim said. "The boys can break you in. I'll just watch for the moment." He grinned.

"Oh," I said. "Oh my." I giggled nervously as the two large men approached me eagerly.

I wasn't here to actually have sex with them, after all, but I let them approach and get their hands all over me, and let down their guard. I let them strip my clothes off, fully confident that I could kill them all while naked if need be.

They brought me over to the couch, and one of them started licking at my crotch, while the other got behind me rubbing my boobs. Well, enough of that, I thought. I snapped my legs tight around the one man's head and about twisted his head off, and reached up and grabbed the other man by the neck and crushed his windpipe and opened an artery with a fingernail, couldn't manage quite good enough leverage from where I was at to just break his neck. This was going to be a mess, but I didn't really care. Not my problem.

With the bodyguards out of the way, I turned my attention toward the now-terrified Mr. Kim. "What the hell are you?" he said. "You're some sort of cyborg? Look, don't hurt me. We can work this out. Whatever they're paying you, I can double it. Triple it!"

I didn't fail to notice that he was trying to quietly pull out a gun while talking. I grabbed his arm and neatly snapped his wrist, and said, "No." I then cleanly broke his neck.

Well, that was that, I thought. I calmly put my clothes back on and casually slipped out again before anyone noticed they were all dead. A job done well enough, I thought to myself. It certainly beat having to deal with aliens of any sort, anyway.

I met back up with Leo again the next day. "I got the job done," I told him.

"So I heard," he said. "Good work on that. Just don't mention it too loudly," he added quietly.

"Right," I said. I had to wonder what might be wrong with mentioning it in the police department, though I supposed that they had to keep some sort of cover to keep it from looking like they were starting to hire assassins to deal with their stickier problems.

But then out in the lobby I overheard the police chief talking to some of the officers. "Any leads on that triple murder last night?" she asked them.

They shook their heads. "No luck. Whoever did it didn't even leave any fingerprints or anything. And all the blood found at the scene belonged to the victims, so our killer obviously managed to kill them all without a fight."

"Troubling," the chief said. "Kim was hardly an upstanding citizen or anything. With the trouble he's had with the mafia, I expect that they finally got sick of him and decided to do him in."

I confronted Leo about it later. "We need to talk," I said. "In private."

"Sure thing, babe," he said.

We went back to my apartment, and once safely inside, I said, "The hit wasn't for the cops. Who was it for, Leo?"

"Look," he said. "We shouldn't talk about this. You might be being monitored."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I said.

"Your implants," he replied. "Or do you have such trust in the government that you don't think they'd pry into your private business?"

The concept of privacy had been a very new one to me. It had never been a luxury or privelege granted to me, and I'd found the 'privacy laws' positively baffling. I expected to be constantly monitored. I didn't expect to find myself in a situation where I might be doing something that they wouldn't approve of.

"Fuck the implants," I said. "Tell me or I'll rip your head off."

Leo paled a little, fully aware that I was perfectly capable of carrying through this threat, but all he said was, "Sorry. It's not worth my head."

I paused and stared quietly at him for a moment, wondering just what secret was so important as to be willing to die rather than spill it, and realized that I couldn't kill him and still find out anything. And neither was I prepared to start torturing him for information, either. I backed down and turned away with a sigh.

"Leo, why do you do this to me?" I shook my head. "Fine. Let's play it your way. I can't rip out my implants for you, but if you've got somebody that can hack them to make sure of it, I'll go along. Alright?"

"Alright," he said, coming over to give me a hug.

"That's a bit premature, don't you think?" I said, not hugging back.

"Sorry," he said.

He took me out to a seedy-looking underground cyberneticist. I had to wonder just how sanitary this was supposed to be, but the man seemed to keep his equipment clean enough. The cyberdoc in question had a very obvious eye implant that covered half of his face.

"Well, howdy there," he said. "The name's Janus. Sometimes they call me Cyclops, if you're into handles like that. What can I do for a fine lass such as yourself today? I'd think you're perfect enough as it is without any implants."

"Cut the sleaze, Janus," Leo said. "And she's already got implants. But we need you to give her the treatment and make sure nobody's watching through them."

"Ah," Janus said, suddenly looking a little nervous. "Right then. I'll get right on that. This way, miss."

I followed after him and took a seat in the chair he indicated, and he strapped me in. I had to wonder at the point of restraining patients for this sort of work, and I wasn't entirely certain if I could fully trust Leo at the moment, so I was feeling very paranoid.

"Relax, miss," Janus said. "This won't hurt a bit." He pulled out a needle.

"You know," I replied, "That's really a surefire way to make sure that I'm not relaxed. Why, exactly, am I doing this again?"

Janus said, "Because you don't trust the government?"

I said, "Of course I don't trust the government, but I don't really have much choice in the matter, now do I?"

"You do now." He stuck me with the needle, and I quickly went out.

Part 18: The Meaning of Freedom.

I came to a couple hours later, still groggy from the drugs I had been given. I groaned, and blinked slowly, staring up at the room as forms gradually came into focus. One-Eyed Janus. Leo.

"There you go, miss," Janus said. "Welcome to freedom."

It occurred to me that the government might be annoyed over my doing this. But then it also occurred to me that they might still have backdoors to get in anyway that Janus might have missed, and also that, failing all else, I could claim I was getting in close with a subversive group for the sake of undermining them. All these rationalizations aside, I was, in a way, both relieved and nervous.

"So, that's it?" I said.

"That's it," Janus said. "They won't be able to monitor you anymore. And it wasn't easy, let me tell you that. Boy, did they do a number on you. They didn't want you getting out of their hands. I'm going to have to pack up shop here, maybe skip the planet, for the time being, so that they don't trace me back here. But that's alright. It's good to have you."

"Thanks, Janus," Leo said.

Janus grinned. "Not a problem. It was my pleasure. Run along, now. I'll catch you guys on the other side."

Leo and I headed out again. "So," Leo said. "How does it feel to be free again?"

"What do you mean, again?" I said with a smirk. "I've never been free a moment in my life, before. Not really." I didn't really count the months spent with my implants broken among the Demons. "The government created me. They've owned me totally since the moment of my birth."

Leo frowned faintly, and led the way off to a side street. "Probably best to disappear for a bit so that they lose track of you. Come on. It's a big planet, and I know all the places to hide. They'll probably expect you to be gone from the planet in no time, and be watching quite carefully all the ships heading out."

"Sure," I said. "Lead the way. But you're going to tell me who you're actually working for and who wanted that job done."

"I will," Leo promised. "Let's just get somewhere safe and quiet first."

Apparently, his idea of 'safe and quiet', was down at Mario's. "What are we doing back here?" I asked.

"It'll be a good place to lay low for a while," Leo said.

"Won't they think to look for me here?" I said.

"Why would they? They might think it's the last place they'd expect to find you. Besides, Mario's got ways of making sure things he doesn't want found aren't found."

I shook my head and shrugged. "Whatever," I muttered. For the moment, I was going to trust him and see where he led me. If trouble of one sort or another came of it, I would deal with it myself.

"Hey, Mario," Leo said, greeting the man as an old friend. "We need someplace to crash for a bit. Can you hook us up? And it needs to be on the quiet."

"Sure thing, Leo," Mario said with a grin, and smiled at me and said, "Nice to see you again, Solly."

I smiled back at him, and followed him down the stairs to a sub-basement that was being used as a wine cellar. I might not have even noticed the secret passageway that he opened up behind a rack of bottles, the mechanism moving smoothly and quietly without so much as a creak or shudder.

"Head on in," Mario said. "You'll be safe enough with me." He grinned again, and closed the passage again after we went through.

"You're trusting me an awful lot," I said. "How can you be sure that I won't just turn you in to the government again?"

"After what Janus did?" Leo said, chuckling. "You'd be lucky if they let you off at all. No, trust me, I don't think you'll be going back there anytime soon. Let me show you how this side lives. Let me show you what it means to be free."

There were several rooms tucked away down beneath the bar. Some of them were being used for storage, particularly of cigarettes and other doubtless illegal goods. Others were sleeping quarters with beds. There was even a small kitchen down here. No one else seemed to be occupying the hidey-hole at the moment besides ourselves. We headed into one of the bedrooms and made ourselves comfortable.

"So, what, are you actually working for the mafia?" I asked.

"Working for?" Leo said, chuckling. "You don't just work for the family. You belong to it."

"So you are with the mafia," I said with a smirk. "Okay then. Were they the ones who wanted Kim dead, then?"

Leo nodded. "He's been a thorn in our side for some time now, but the government hasn't been willing to do anything about him. They'd much rather spend their efforts tracking down cigarette smugglers than crack down on slavery rings."

"You're still all criminals," I said. "And now you've made me one, too. You realize that you've manipulated me just as surely as the government ever did, and gave me as little choice in the matter?"

Leo shook his head. "Oh, you had a choice, even if you didn't realize just what the consequences might have been at the time. You could have killed me, or turned me in. Instead you chose to go along with me and see where the rabbit hole might lead."

"You do have a point," I admitted with a sigh. "And I didn't even bother double-checking the job you gave me, either. It just seemed like, you know, the right thing to do. Something that needed to be done."

"You have to understand the limit of what I could have told you while you still may have been being monitored, also," Leo said.

I shrugged. "Yeah. I know. So, what happens now? Where do we go from here?"

"You've got a world of opportunities ahead of you, Shadowcrawler," Leo said. "It's up to you to decide which of them to take."

I nodded, and said, "Perhaps so. But don't call me Shadowcrawler, please. My name is Melissa. Though it might be best to just call me Solly instead." I had long since grown out of the phase of idolizing Arachne and wanting to be just like her. Especially after seeing the way she had treated me like her favorite toy.

"Alright," Leo said. "Solly."

I still wasn't entirely certain just how I felt about this entire business. I was adrift, confused, lost, and purposeless, for the first time in my life. Even before, when I had been out of contact with the government, I had still had a purpose, a mission to complete, an objective to attain. Now? I didn't know where to go from here. This had all been so sudden and I hadn't exactly even had much chance to think it over first. But then if I had, I'm sure the government would have known about it and put a stop to it. One way or another.

I didn't really wonder for long, though. Leo's connections intrigued me. So the next morning, I came out of my room to find him making omelettes in the underground kitchen. They smelled delicious.

"Ah, good morning, Solly," Leo said. "Have a seat. Breakfast will be ready in a moment."

I took a seat at the table. "Leo," I said. "I want you to introduce me to your friends."

"Heh," Leo said. "Always one to get right to the point before even saying hello?"

I chuckled. "Sorry. Let me try this again. Good morning, my dear Leo. Your cooking smells most pleasant. I would like to become a hitman for the mafia. Could you possibly hook me up?"

Leo had to laugh. He served an omelette on a plate and passed it over to me. "Breakfast is served," he said. "And I'm sure that we'll be glad to have you. I just have to wonder what brought this on all of a sudden. Been doing a lot of thinking about what you want to do?"

"Something like that," I said with a smirk as I started eating. "Even after all the government abused me, I still find myself yearning for some sort of structure and purpose."

Leo sat down across from me with his own plate of food. "You want to tell me about it? You're not under any obligation to keep their secrets anymore, after all."

"I don't know," I said uncomfortably. "I don't really care to go into all the details or anything." I thought back on Casey, and what Arachne had done to both of us. No, I didn't want to tell him about that. That was one thing I wasn't prepared to share anytime soon.

"Well, whatever you feel like talking about," Leo said. "I'll listen. Just so long as you don't kill me afterward." He grinned.

"Maybe another time," I said with a shrug. "But do you really need to ask, anyway? They had me trying to track down cigarette smugglers, for fuck's sake."

"You do have a point there," he said. "Anyway, I'll see what I can do. I'll go and talk to some people. You'd probably be best to stay put right here and lay low for the moment."

"No problem," I said.

After he went out, I used the time to poke around on the net a bit, at some of the things I normally didn't look into. Even using my implants felt different. The government had had its own security features before, but they had felt natural, built into everything else. This felt different. Now I could feel the connection slipping through less legitimate channels to conceal my location and identity. I wasn't directly tied in to the government computers anymore. I could feel the computers I was tied into now, and they were all different. All running slightly different systems, some faster than others, some slower, some newer, some older. It was like stepping out of a room of clones and seeing all the faces of the world.

Several hours later, Leo came back. "Good afternoon," he said. "I spoke with the boys, and they're just dying to meet you. We can head over first thing tomorrow if you like."

I smiled at him. "That would be great," I said.

Part 19: How I Became a Hitman For the Mafia.

Leo took me out to a nice, big house down by a lake. There was a yacht out on the water, and few other buildings nearby. If I hadn't known better, I might have thought this was merely the residence of a distinguished, well-to-do family who enjoyed their privacy and the finer things in life. I suppose, in a way, they were.

He pulled off the road and parked his car outside the house, and we got out and headed up to the door. Leo rang the doorbell, and after a few moments, an elderly man in a suit came to the door.

"Ah," he said. "Master Leo. Come right in. They are expecting you. They're in the parlor having a bit of brunch at the moment."

We headed inside. In the parlor, there were several men and a couple women sitting around eating and talking loudly. Their idea of a "bit of" brunch was apparently just shoving breakfast and lunch together with copious amounts of food. They were all wearing such fashion as to make me feel underdressed for the occasion.

"Leo, my boy!" called a man across the room. "So nice of you to bring your girlfriend to meet the family. Come, sit, there's plenty of room and still plenty of food to go around."

"I'm not-" I began, then thought better of it, and cleared my throat. "I'm not really that hungry at the moment."

A plump middle-aged woman piped in, "Oh, come now, you should eat something! You're so skinny!"

"Oh, I suppose it couldn't hurt," I said, grinning and going to take a seat next to Leo.

The man who spoke before said, "It's always nice to meet such a lovely, promising young lady such as yourself. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Roberto Fontana."

This was really not what I had been expecting at all. But I took it in stride well enough, relaxed and had a bit to eat with them. I stayed quiet, for the most part, while they talked, they yelled, they discussed illegal activities as if they were as normal as going shopping. Then Roberto turned his attention to me again.

"Solly, my dear," he said. "That was your name, was it not? I hear you were the one who dealt with Mr. Kim. Is this true?"

I glanced about nervously, and wanted to shrink down into my chair. I didn't like having this much attention called to my activities. I just gave a short nod and continued eating.

"Ah, no need to be shy about it, dear girl," Roberto went on. "We're all family here."

I felt very out of place in general, not the least of which for misleading them about any sort of relationship between myself and Leo. I was hoping for something a little more private and quiet. But for the impotence of the government to enforce its own laws, they all but flaunted their criminal activities.

After a while, they finished up eating and began to clear away the table, and most of the people who had been eating wandered off again to do their own thing. Roberto remained, however, and he pulled out a cigarette to puff on as he looked over at me.

"So, Solly, dear," he said. "Tell me a little about yourself, if you will. Where is it you are from? You're no native of Calabria, I don't believe. Your Italian has a definite accent. Your first language is English, isn't it?"

I chuckled nervously. "No, I'm not a native," I said. "I spent time on several different planets while growing up. And yes, we primarily spoke English, but I was also taught a number of other languages along the way."

I was hesitant to even name any names, not that I even knew the name of the planet I was born on. Some of these government bases were so secret that the very existence of the systems wasn't widely known, beyond the obvious fact that there was a star there. Even if I'd broken away from the government, I was reluctant to casually reveal all their secrets just yet. It still hadn't quite sunk in that I really wasn't going back there.

"Ah," Roberto said. "Being multilingual is often a useful trait to have. You seem quite skilled for your age. And it's rare that I meet a young woman who is quite so good with killing. Also a useful thing, since people will often underestimate a woman. But from my reports, those men were killed not with bullets, but with your bare hands. Most impressive."

"I'm not an ordinary woman," I said with a faint smirk.

"So I might have guessed," he said. "Just what are you capable of, my dear?"

"I'm a cyborg," I said. "I could bend steel with my bare hands. I could survive injuries that would kill most people. I'm sure there's some long list of just what my implants and modifications might do, but honestly in some cases I'm not entirely certain just where some things are different from normal people. I was likely genetically engineered as well."

"Interesting," Roberto said. "The government did this, I take it?"

I nodded. "You could guess that, I suppose. Nobody else has the resources and means to pull off something like that, to my knowledge anyway."

"Nor the motivation," Roberto said. "Some private geneticists have created what they might believe to be better humans. But they did not set out to create killing machines."

"And the government did," I said. "The very existence of the project was a secret. My existence, is a secret. And I don't even know just what else they might have done. This is the sort of thing that could very well get you killed if they found out you knew."

Roberto shrugged nonchalantly. "There are a lot of things which would get me killed if they found out about me." He laughed heartily. "So tell me then, Solly, are you planning on marrying my nephew?"

I replied, "I hadn't really thought about it."

Roberto chuckled. "Yes, you haven't known one another very long yet, I'm sure, never mind set a date or anything."

I glanced aside at Leo, who just grinned back at me. So, I thought, he was in on this ruse, and Roberto hadn't just made assumptions about it. I smirked at Leo and turned my attention back to Roberto. "To be perfectly honest with you, sir," I said, "I hadn't realized that Leo felt that way about me." I blushed.

Leo said, "You hadn't?"

I laughed nervously. "Boy, do I look like a fool. I'm sure it must have been quite obvious to you, but I was so caught up in work and whatnot that I never even noticed."

Roberto smiled at me sympathetically. "My apologies for startling you with this. Clearly there has been some miscommunication along the way."

"It's quite alright," I said. "I'm not always as big on social nuances as I ought to be sometimes. I mean, marriage? This... isn't something I've ever really thought about."

"I can understand that, with your unusual upbringing," Roberto said. "I would imagine that they did not wish their agents to be getting into what they may have perceived as potentially detrimental relationships. We're not the government here, however. To us, nothing is more important than the bond of family. Even those of us who are not actually related by blood are considered family."

"I would, nonetheless, very much like to be a part of your family," I said.

It was appealing to me. I had felt that family bond had been lacking of late. But then, even before we'd been sent out from training, it had been a rather twisted one, full of backstabbing and vicious competition. Yeah, I know, not so different from many real families. Still. You know what I mean. Nothing wrong with a little competition, after all, it just shouldn't be, you know, actively trying to kill one another, if you're supposed to be working together.

"Did they teach you, in your training, the meaning of family?" Roberto asked me. "The ties that bind us together, whether ties of blood or water? These are ties that cannot be broken but through death, and even then one should try to avenge one's fallen kin if at all possible."

"To an extent," I said, and added quietly, "They abused it a lot, too." I shook my head and said quickly, "But I'd really rather not go into that right now."

Roberto clicked his tongue. "Some things should not be abused. I understand, and I can understand why you would wish to get away from their influence. Know that that is not the way things are done here. I can promise you that you will be treated well, as a member of the family."

"I appreciate it, Mr. Fontana," I said.

"Please, call me Roberto," he said. "And be aware that loyalty begets loyalty. We will not betray you, but we expect you to never betray us as well. You do not leave the family, except in a casket. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Roberto," I said.

"If you still have any doubts or hesitation, now would be the time to say so," Roberto said. "I won't force you into something that you weren't absolutely certain what you were getting into just because you knew too much to let go otherwise. In your current situation, you are likely in more danger than any of us at the moment, regardless. We can protect you, if you so choose, but at this moment you may walk away and forget anything you saw here."

I smiled wryly at him, and found myself... relaxed. "I appreciate it. But no, I've already made up my mind. I'll stay, if you'll have me."

"Well, in that case," Roberto said, taking a puff of his cigarette. "Welcome to the family."

Part 20: Matters of the Family.

I expected to be put through some sort of test, as I had been when leaving planet Machimos. But nothing among this family worked quite as I expected it to. I was welcomed with open arms, and they all seemed to take it for granted that when I gave my word, I meant it.

And I meant it. Betraying them was the last thing on my mind. Little by little, I stopped caring what the government might think and more worrying about what they might do to me if they caught me. So I always made sure to stay one step ahead of the game, cover my tracks, and make myself invisible. I changed my face, so that I might not be recognized by any man or machine who had known what I looked like. I started a new life.

I was a little shaky on things at first. There were many social conventions that I really wasn't used to. But they made me feel at home. They made me feel like part of the family. I never felt outcast or out of place. When Roberto said something, they listened. I became my new face and my new name.

And then there was Leo.

He came home one day with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other, and offered them to me.

I had to laugh a little. "For me?" I said. "How nice." I wasn't even sure what to do with the flowers, though, and I just ate the chocolates. I still wasn't entirely up on courting behavior, but now that I knew that was what he was trying to do, I wasn't so completely oblivious to it, at least. And it wasn't that I was exactly objected to it, anyway. So I let him court me.

That was one house I never went hungry in. I might have been in danger of getting fat but for my metabolism, thanks to the ever-present Italian grandmother. I never found out what her name was. Roberto just called her "Mama", and everyone else called her "Grandma", whether she was actually their grandmother or not. Though so far as I could tell, she seemed to have at least a dozen actual grandchildren, too. Roberto clearly had had brothers and sisters, but if they were still alive, I never saw them.

I regularly got to do work for them. There was often someone who needed to be killed, and I was the one they turned to when no one else would do. "Calling in Solly" became what they said when they were getting serious and really meant business.

I married Leo in the summer of the next year. So now I had become known as Solly Storace. I wasn't even entirely certain if I was capable of reproduction, although I doubted it, but I didn't let that put a damper on things. They had already practically adopted me as it was, so it wasn't like they were overly caught up in blood relations.

Years passed, and I was happy. Our activities ranged throughout the galaxy, and while they were occasionally hindered by the government and law enforcement, there were enough successes among the lot to make quite the killing. Unfortunately, the government was always there to stop our greatest schemes. I became paranoid, fearing more and more that there was a government agent in our ranks, but that couldn't be, I figured. Otherwise they would have found out about me, after all.

I didn't realize at the time that I was that agent.

Janus had found the most obvious connections, even a few that weren't as obvious, but I suppose he'd never realized that there was another backdoor. The government watched every move I made, and rather than crack down on me, they used me to keep an eye on the criminal element of the galaxy under their control and put a stop to what might have been our greatest trimphs.

They ignored us for the most part. They didn't really care about cigarette smuggling at all. They let us get away with quite a lot. They didn't even care about most of the people that I killed. But things had to come to a head somewhere along the way.

Years passed. Decades. Grandma died. Roberto grew old, but remained spry and healthy. Leo started showing signs of age himself. But I remained as I was, untouched by the years, as if I were still in my twenties. I never had any children of my own, but we'd sort of adopted a young boy by the name of Pan. Oh, Pan is worth a story in and of himself. He was quite the handful!

Interlude

Sixshooter said, "Oh, that's lovely, the government was using you to watch what the mob was up to?"

Melissa nodded. "Yeah. And I had no idea of it at the time. I thought I had actually managed to get away from them. But instead I became their perfect undercover agent."

"So, is there any porn in here?" Sixshooter asked. "I'm sure you had to have had sex with this Leo fellow at least once!"

Melissa snickered. "Oh, yeah, plenty of times." She leaned over and grinned coyly at him. "Do you really want to hear about it? I'm sure it's not nearly as interesting as some of the things you've probably done." She snickered. "But I'd be happy to give some demonstrations here along the way, too."

"Now we're talking!"

Part 21: Prodigal Son.

Mm. That was fun. Now where was I? Right, I was going to tell you about Pan.

Leo and I were in our thirties at the time, but it had become fairly apparent by that point that I wasn't going to be able to have children of my own. Though it probably should have been obvious from the start as I had never even menstruated, but as that subject really didn't come up a lot, I didn't actually know what it was and it had never occurred to me.

We talked about adopting on occasion, but never actually did anything about it. Leo was a bit wishy-washy about the entire business, as he really wanted a child of his own, or at least a baby that he could pretend was his own, and none of the kids available seemed to be good enough for him.

But then Pan showed up.

We saw him on the streets one day coming home from shopping, a scrawny street kid rifling through the trash for something to eat. He couldn't have been older than five or six, I thought. He was filthy, and I had to wonder how long he had survived out here on his own. I know I hadn't seen him around that area before.

"Leo," I said quietly, stopping him to look over in the boy's direction. "Look at that kid. Who is he? What is he doing here?"

"Maybe some lost orphan," Leo said. "Doubt he's a runaway. You'd think he'd have been picked up by social services by now and shoved into a foster home."

"Hey," I called out. "You there, boy. Come over here."

The boy looked up at me. His eyes were bright and alert, but also afraid. He scurried off into the shadows faster than I would have thought he could move.

"Skittish thing, isn't he?" Leo said, frowning.

"I should see if I can find him," I said.

"Why?" Leo replied. "He's probably afraid we're going to drag him off to social services. They'll pick him up sooner or later, I'm sure. All you'll do is just terrify him even more."

I snorted. "He's lost, alone and afraid, hungry and cold. He's just a child. We can help him. Get him some food and warm clothes."

"And then turn him over to social services?" Leo said.

"What?" I said. "I thought you wanted to adopt a child!"

Leo raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, not picking up every stray on the streets. He's too old. I'd rather adopt a baby, you know?"

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, do whatever you want, then. I'm going after him."

I secured my shopping bag over my shoulders and darted off down the alleyways, but my argument with Leo had given the boy a fair bit of a head start. I didn't think he'd go far, however. I suspected he was tired and weak, and would just try to find a nearby hiding place rather than run halfway across town.

Shuffling. Noises. I followed after, knowing that the kid was somewhere nearby. I could hear him. I could smell him.

"Hey, kid," I called out. I knew he was hiding in a crawlspace nearby, but it was too tight an area for me to squeeze into. "Relax, I'm not going to hurt you." I didn't think he'd believe that, though, so I pulled out a chocolate bar from my bag. "Here. I've got something for you."

The boy peered out tentatively, hesitantly. I pulled off the wrapper so that he could see and smell what it was. Slowly, he gathered up his courage to come out and snatch the candy from my hand, and sat at my feet to gnaw on it hungrily.

"Hungry, weren't you?" I said. "Well, there's more where that came from, if you want to come along. I can get you cleaned up and get you all the food you could possibly want. What do you say?"

"Mm," he said.

After finishing devouring the chocolate, he stood up and looked up at me expectantly, as if to follow. I chuckled and said, "Well, come along then, boy."

"Pan," he said.

"Hmm?"

"My name is Pan."

I said, "Alright then, Pan. You can call me Solly. Let's go get you squared away then, shall we?"

Leo met me back on the street, somewhat bemused, but humoring me. "Well, hello there, kid," he said to Pan.

"Leo, this is Pan," I said. "Pan, Leo."

Pan didn't even answer, just hiding behind one of my legs.

"Shy, isn't he?" Leo said.

"He's just nervous," I said.

So, we took Pan home and got him cleaned up, and gave him a change of clothes. They were a bit too big for him, but at least they weren't falling apart and filthy. Then sent him off to the kitchen for some of Grandma's cooking.

Meanwhile, I looked over the clothes that he had been wearing. It seemed as though he hadn't changed them in quite a while, months, if not longer. But they were better made than I had expected. And he had been wearing them inside out. On the back of the actual outside, there was a tag sewn into the cloth, that read, "Property of Calabria Genetics Laboratory".

I frowned. The words were a little faded, but they definitely read what I thought they did. Was this boy an escaped experiment? From the looks of things, he had been on the run for some time now, but they hadn't managed to catch him yet. I imagined that the only reason I'd managed to draw him out was because he knew he was starving and needed the calories desparately.

Instead of going to wash them or throw them out, I hid the clothes away, and went to the kitchen to see how he was getting on with Grandma. She was old, but she still loved to cook, and stuff people's faces. I found Pan there inhaling a plate of pasta.

"Where did you find this boy?" Grandma said. "He's skinny as a stick! Going to need to get him fattened up good."

I chuckled and went over to him as Grandma wandered off to get started on a pie. "How are you doing, Pan?" I asked him.

"I'm good," he said between mouthfuls of pasta.

"So tell me, Pan," I said. "Where did you come from?"

He froze up, almost looking ready to bolt off again with his mouth still full.

"Relax," I said. "I'm not going to hurt you, and I'm not going to take you back there or anything. I'll keep you here as safe as I can, alright? Just talk to me, please."

He relaxed a miniscule amount, finishing chewing and swallowing his food, before saying, "From nowhere. From noplace. I don't have any parents, so you can't take me back to them."

"I know," I said quietly. "It's alright. Neither do I."

Pan looked up at me strangely for a moment before going back to eating. "Not going back there," he muttered. "They'll kill me. They'll dissect me."

"Why do you think that?" I asked.

"Because they said they would," Pan said. "Specimen 47. Failure. Scheduled for termination, dissection, and disposal." He said these words in English, in a crisp monotone.

I frowned again. "But you escaped instead," I said. "How did you get away?"

"By being too smart for them," he said. "I snuck out through the pipes. Maybe they didn't think I could fit or hold my breath that long. But I got out clean and good, and never looked back."

"How did you manage to avoid being caught again?" I asked.

"Ran away," Pan said. "Got far away. Hooked up with some other kids for a while. But they weren't smart. They were dumb kids who did dumb things. So I left them before they could get me caught, and ran away even further."

"Do you know how old you are?" I asked.

Pan shrugged. "Nope, not a clue. I know when I escaped, though. It was during the summer festival two years ago." He paused thoughtfully for a moment and looked at me. "What did you mean by you didn't have any parents either? The kids on the street said everyone had parents at some point, but if I did, I never heard of them or knew who they were."

I leaned back in my seat and looked off. "I was born in a laboratory, like you," I said. "Under somewhat different circumstances, no doubt. But I know I was born in a vat, and not from a human mother."

"Did you escape, too?" Pan asked.

I thought about that for a moment. "In a way."

"So you must have gotten really good at not getting caught again," Pan said. "I know they've been after me. But I always managed to get away from them."

"What made you decide to come out for me?" I asked.

Pan shrugged again. "You didn't act like them. They weren't willing to get dirty to follow me. Or to offer me candy. They just wanted to order me around."

"I could have been," I said with a crooked grin. "If they were smart. But it's alright. You're safe now, and I'm not going to let anything happen to you now. Be sure to finish up your pasta. Smells like Grandma's going to be done with that pie soon. When was the last time you had a real pie? Ever?" I grinned.

"What's a pie?" Pan asked.

I clucked my tongue. "You're definitely going to need some education, too," I said with a broad grin.

Pan was a fast learner. He devoured everything he could get his hands on, both literally and figuratively. Although he never really filled out much, as I could assume his metabolism prevented him from gaining much weight, he did manage to stop being nothing but skin and bones after a while, thanks to copious amounts of Grandma's cooking.

After some examination and questioning, I determined that he didn't seem to have any implants of any sort. He was just a genetically enhanced human being, not a cyborg. But even without the neural implants to help with storing and processing data, he was far more intelligent than any other child around his age that I had previously encountered. Not that I spent an awful lot of time around children in general, mind you. We had, admittedly, interacted with a few of them while flirting with the idea of adoption, though Leo had still been adamant about prefering to adopt a baby.

"What are we going to do with this kid, Solly?" he asked me. "He's so old!"

I snorted. "We certainly can't take him to social services, that's for sure."

Leo said, "I'm sure he was exaggerating about them wanting to kill and dissect him."

"Can you really be sure?" I asked. "And we don't even know why he was considered a failure, for that matter. There might be something fundamentally wrong with him, but clearly nothing that stopped him from surviving on the streets for the last two years on his own."

"All the more reason to be rid of him," Leo replied.

I said, "How can you say that? He's just a child!"

"Yeah, well," Leo said. "Somebody else can take care of him."

"What kind of an attitude is that?" I said. I rubbed my forehead. "Would you turn him away for that? He doesn't have to be our 'son', but that doesn't mean he can't be family. Roberto-"

"Damn Roberto," Leo interrupted. "You don't have to bring him into this." He sighed. "Fine. I'm sorry. You're obviously already attached to the kid. Do what you like. Go ahead, keep him around. Just be careful, alright?"

I hugged him. "Thanks, Leo."

Part 22: Failures and Broken Dreams.

Thinking on it later, it should have occurred to me that the clothes Pan was wearing when I found him were perfectly made to fit him despite his having been on the run for two years. Perhaps that might have been attributed to stunted growth due to poor nutrition, but it became clear eventually that this was not the case.

A year passed. I had measured him shortly after we took him in, and noticed something peculiar about him. He wasn't growing. Over the past year, he hadn't grown an inch. Not even a millimeter. Something was seriously not right about this. Was this the failure that they had been willing to dissect him over? Some attempt at engineering human immortality gone wrong?

But he still acted like a child, if a very precocious one. He liked to play the pipes. And then, one time we visited one of Leo's cousins who lived in another town. Their dog had recently had a litter of puppies, and Pan took to them like a flea.

"They're a good breed," Leo's cousin, Anita, was saying. "Their papa's a Tamaskan, and their mama's a Malamute. They'd make good guard dogs, I'd bet."

"The kid really seems to like them," I commented.

Anita chuckled. "Well, take one, then. I'm sure Uncle Roberto wouldn't mind having a guard dog around the house. Ha! Like anyone would dare try to rob the family!"

"Can I have one, really?" Pan said, perking up and looking over at Anita. His sharp ears never missed a thing, even when you thought he wasn't listening.

"Certainly," Anita said. "Take your pick of the males. I'm planning on breeding the young bitch."

Pan looked over the four males in the litter consideringly. "Hmm... This one!" he said, holding up a puppy triumphantly.

Anita provided Pan with a small book on the care and feeding of a puppy. Pan devoured it in five minutes and went back to Anita with some very pointed questions about things the book had omitted and been vague on. Anita was more than a little flustered.

"You read through that already?" she stammered.

"Did I do something wrong?" Pan said, glancing aside at me in confusion.

I chuckled, and explained to Anita, "He's a very precocious young man. But he looks young for his age, also. He's really eight years old." By this point, I had to guess that he was actually older than this, to have caused alarm in the scientists working on the project, but it was close enough as far as I could figure.

So Anita answered his questions as well as she could, seeming to try to mentally place Pan in the category of a very small adult rather than a little boy who had to be spoken to with simple words.

"I'm going to call him Mr. Fuzz," he proclaimed.

We took Mr. Fuzz home, and he quickly grew from a cute little puppy into an enormous wolf-like dog. By this point, even Pan was starting to notice something was a bit odd from his observations of the world.

"Solly," he asked me. "Does everything grow up?"

"Most things, I suppose," I replied.

"When am I going to get any bigger?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe you're like Peter Pan. The boy who never grew up."

He thought about that for a few moments. "I couldn't imagine being anything but what I am, but I don't know if it's all a good thing. People will always treat me like a little kid. But I'm not just a little kid. I'm probably smarter than them."

I chuckled softly, and said, "Yes, but it's not polite to rub their noses in it."

We decided to take advantage of the excuse to move around a bit to avoid drawing too many questions about the boy. It had been long enough since I had gotten away from government control that we figured it was safe to jump planet by now. No one had come after me during that time. So we traveled from planet to planet, never spending longer than six months in any one place, doing jobs for the family and taking care of business.

Pan was getting involved in our work as well. People would underestimate him because he looked like a young boy, but he was far smarter than they gave him credit for, and could often hack into their computer systems himself. I'd taught him a lot, and his capacity for learning was remarkable. Perhaps their experiment had been with attempting to allow the human brain to continue to learn as it does when it's very young, but something had gone wrong with it and prevented the body from fully maturing. Pan never hit puberty or grew a millimeter over the day I met him.

Everything was great for a while. We went back to Calabria occasionally to make plans with Roberto or visit Grandma, up until she passed away, but most of our time was spent offworld. It was a good time, but it wasn't to last.

While we were on a job on planet Austin, Pan disappeared. When I went to search for him diligently in the area he had been last known to be, I found an unpleasant surprise waiting for me.

Tharpie.

"Shit," I cursed under my breath, but she had already seen me. I prayed that she didn't recognize me, but no such luck.

"Ah, there you are, Shadowcrawler," she said with a cruel grin. "They told me that the boy would lead me back to you. It seems they weren't off the mark this time."

"Tharpie, what did you do with the boy?" I demanded.

"Oh, you don't need to worry about him anymore," she said, pulling out Pan's favorite pipes and tossing them casually at my feet. "I took him off to be properly studied. Arachne wants to relay good work on tracking him down and experimenting with his capabilities, but the experiment has gone on long enough, as has your undercover mission. It's time for you to come back to the fold."

"What, you don't think I'm a corrupted demonic-tainted zombie anymore?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at her and not wanting to look at the instrument laying on the ground.

"I still have to wonder, but Arachne wants you back regardless," Tharpie said.

"They should have killed you," I snarled. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't do so right now."

"Why would you do that?" Tharpie said in confusion. "Anyway. Good work on rooting out the organized crime throughout the planets, Arachne says. We're doing a major crackdown as we speak all over the place. They'll never know what hit them."

I stared at her. "What are you talking about? I never sent anything back to the government..."

Tharpie just laughed. "You didn't seriously think that, did you? Oh my, that's too rich. You weren't being an undercover agent, you were being a traitor? Heh heh. Arachne won't hold it against me for killing you right here."

She let out a high-pitched note and attacked. This time, however, my mind wasn't addled by Demon disease, and my senses were sharp. I was more than a match for her. But much as I wanted to kill her, I wasn't about to hang around when Leo might be in danger. I evaded her attacks and dropped her into a trash chute to delay her, then made my way home as quickly as I could, back to the place my family had been staying.

I was already far too late. They'd come and gone as quickly as ninjas in the night, and all they'd left behind was broken bodies. They'd even killed Mr. Fuzz. Leo lay dead on the floor of the study. He'd been standing, and was shot in the face. The dog must have alerted him to intruders in the house, but it was no use. I never even had a chance to say goodbye. But now wasn't the time to mourn. I blinked the tears that threatened out of my eyes and fled from the scene. Tharpie would be after me, and I wasn't about to be caught unawares.

I didn't see Tharpie again that day. I got away cleanly, but without getting my revenge. But I got away, and hopped a ship to another planet, without even checking to see where it was going. I just wanted to be away from there. To go anywhere else. All the while, I wanted to rip open my skull and tear out my implants with my bare hands.

Interlude

Sixshooter shook his head. "Tell me you killed her later."

Melissa smirked. "I'll get to it."

"Although," Sixshooter said. "The idea of someone being stuck as a little kid forever. Ugh."

Melissa shrugged. "I'm sure it wasn't what they had in mind, but it wasn't the kid's fault that they screwed up somewhere along the way."

"So what happened to the boy?" Sixshooter asked. "Did they kill him?"

"I don't know," Melissa said. "I can only assume so, since I never even saw him again. Perhaps just as well that I never had hard evidence of it. I was already incensed enough about the entire matter."

"And they killed the dog!" Sixshooter said. "How rude is that?"

"I know!" Melissa said. "Sure, he was getting old by that point, but still. Poor Mr. Fuzz, slain in the line of duty."