Chapter 11: The Demon's List

Nana yawned as she clicked and typed away at her new computer. Yes it was nice, but she just couldn't find a way to put it to proper use. The best she could do was post in the massive multitude of rumor topics on the internet, hoping that she could pick out a nugget of useful information among the piles of garbage and memes. It had proven so useless thus far that she had even allowed her brother, Nobu, to play games on the computer, watching him with distaste as he reduced their only source of intelligence to a mere juvenile plaything.

In truth, however, both Nana and Nobu were glad for the distraction. Everyone at the safehouse, especially the children, felt that Masaru's search for weapons was the final step into inevitability. Once the guns had entered the warehouse, there would be no turning back from the war. Nana wondered if she and her brother would have to fight as well.

At the moment, she was alone in the dark, save for the glow of the computer monitor. Everyone else was asleep. This was why she jumped in fright when she heard the email notification sound pop out from the speakers that she had forgotten to switch off after Nobu had finished playing. Looking at the sender identification, she immediately recognized Masaru's cellphone number. After opening the email, Nana jumped out of her chair, knocking it over in her panic, and rushed to wake Osamu and the other adults. A second's delay could have been the difference between life and death…

Petra breathed heavily as her heart raced and her body secreted generous amounts of adrenalin throughout its systems. Her mind suppressed the searing pain in her shoulder but kept her thinking clear and rational, just as it was programmed to do. The bullet had just missed her collarbone and passed through without hitting anything vital, despite the fact that Petrushka had been standing perfectly still at the time the shot was taken. This and the fact that the sniper hadn't taken a second shot before the quintet ducked into an abandoned building for cover was a strong indication that the marksman that had attacked them was no marksman at all.

"The time between the impact of the bullet and the report of the rifle was short," remarked Jean, "The shooter's close."

"We should conserve our ammunition," Alessandro added, "Petra and I will go find the sniper if you give use directions, Jean."

"She's injured," Jean replied.

Petrushka interjected, "I'm fine, it's just my off-shoulder. You'll do a better job of pinpointing the shooter."

"I will draw the fire away," Masaru offered, "Once I have done so, you may move."

They all approved. There were no other options. "Rico," Jean commanded, "You go with Masaru. If anything happens to him, get him into cover."

"Affirmative," Rico responded obediently.

There was a brief, silent count to three and like a flash Alessandro, Petra, Rico and Masaru were on the move. The latter two sprang out around the corner of their cover into the street where they had been fired upon. The shooter seemed to hesitate for a second, perhaps taken aback by this sudden display of recklessness, before taking another shot. This one went wide, shattering the windshield of a car parked nearby and causing the alarm to go off.

As Rico and Masaru dove into cover, Sandro and Petra jumped out of it at a dead sprint. Again there was a pause from the shooter and a delayed shot. This one landed closer to its intended target, blowing some mortar out of a wall several feet away from Sandro's head. The Fratello took this as their signal to duck into a side alley.

Alessandro took a brief moment to catch his breath before speaking into his earpiece. "Jean," he grunted, "Do you have eyes on the sniper?"

Jean peaked around the corner cautiously, looking for the flutter of a curtain or the glint of a scope in one of the many buildings at the end of the street. "Negative," he reported, "Get him to take another shot."

Alessandro barely concealed his sigh in response. "Wilco," he answered curtly.

"If you don't mind, Rico…?" Petra said sweetly into her earpiece.

"Moving," Rico replied simply as she and Masaru jumped once more into the kill zone. They heard the shot but again the inept shooter missed his marks.

Jean caught the sight of the muzzle flash out of the corner of his eye. He immediately fixed his gaze on a tall apartment building, waiting for a second shot so that he could pinpoint the sniper's exact location. He held his breath intently. Finally he heard a distant pop! and saw a flash of light.

"I've got him!" Jean reported, "The white office building, sixth floor."

"Roger," Alessandro responded, "We're flanking. Keep him busy, Rico!"

"Understood," Rico replied.

Sandro locked eyes with Petra, who gave him a silent nod as she drew her Taurus from its holster. The pair then moved down the alley to circle around out of the shooter's line of sight.

Petrushka stopped before entering the street. She poked her head around the corner and saw that a few civilians had stepped out of their restaurants and bars at the sound of distant gunfire. The bystanders looked around, confused.

Alessandro removed the track jacket he had been wearing and draped it over his partner's shoulders in order to hide her gunshot wound. "Be cool," he advised.

"Sempre," Petra scoffed smartly as she and her handler stepped out onto the street at a brisk walk. The building they were heading for was only half a block away from their current position, but the Fratello had to move as fast as possible without attracting any attention. Especially considering the sniper's poor aim, he would soon feel pressured to relocate.

"Keep an eye out," Sandro warned his partner, "We don't want to get ambushed ourselves."

His fears, however, were unfounded. No assassins jumped out at them from the crowd and even the building in which the sniper's last known position was located seemed to be unguarded and unwatched.

"I don't like this," Petra mused suspiciously, "It's been too easy so far."

As usual, Alessandro's answer didn't reflect the gravity of the situation. "Don't worry," he said in mock reassurance, "There's still plenty of time for us to get stabbed."

Petrushka shook her head impatiently. "Just go!" she urged her handler, "I've got your six."

At this, the pair entered the office building. They could still hear the occasional sound of sniper fire, muffled by several floors of concrete above their heads. They took this as a sign that they still had time to capture their attacker. All the same, they practically flew up the stairs (getting into a tight, confined elevator did not seem to be the safest option in this case).

Finally, when the gunfire sounded about level with their position, Sandro and Petra stalked through a maze of cubicles in search of their target. Despite the lack of opposition, both handler and cyborg remained tense and made sure to be prepared for an ambush at every corner. They were so intent on being prepared for combat, in fact, that neither paid any attention to the sound of rushed footsteps down the hall, nor the crash of someone flinging themselves through a window.

They would have time to regret this later, however, as they finally sighted the sniper inside of an enclosed office owned by some corporate higher-up. He seemed to be completely oblivious to his surroundings and even from where they stood outside, the Fratello could see that the sniper's hands were trembling and fumbled with the bolt after each shot. His lack of skill wasn't a simple lure after all.

Sandro and Petra exchanged a glance and silent nod. Both understood the unspoken plan: break the door down, storm into the room, and make as much noise as possible to startle the shooter.

They stacked up on either side of the door, silently counted to three, and then Sandro gave a violent kick, splintering the doorframe. In a flash, Petrushka was inside and rushed straight for the sniper, preparing to disarm him.

This proved to be unnecessary, though, as the shooter spun around in a panic as soon as the Fratello made their entry. He voluntarily released his grip on his hunting rifle, letting it fall out the window and down six stories, in order to raise his hands in surrender, a look of sheer terror mixed with despair on his face. Unfortunately for him, nothing could stop Petrushka with all of the momentum that she had built up in spite of her injured shoulder. She flung the track jacket, still draped over her shoulders, at her quarry. It wrapped itself around his face, muffling his pathetic, desperate pleas for mercy as the redhead pounced and took him to the floor, subduing the pseudo-sniper once and for all. She straddled his prone figure like a predator ready to deliver the coup de grâce.

"Gomenasai! Gomenasai!" the shooter sobbed through the jacket wrapped around his face. He was practically crying, "Please, don't kill me!"

Hearing this, Sandro holstered his weapon. "Get off of him, Petra," he said coolly, "If he was really with the Satori he would have either killed himself or forced us to kill him by now."

Petrushka complied, cautiously rising to allow the prisoner to get to his feet. She kept a sharp eye on every minute movement, however, paying special attention to his hands which had been paralyzed in a claw-like defensive position in front of his face.

"Who do you work for?" Alessandro questioned their captive in fluent Japanese as he stood slowly and removed the jacket from his face, "You're not with the Satori, are you?"

"N-no," the sniper stammered, still frightened, "I'm freelance."

"Who hired you?" Petra asked, her speech tinged with a slight accent.

"I…don't know." The prisoner flinched slightly after saying this, apparently expecting some kind of punishment.

Sandro and Petra shared a skeptical look, not believing that a hired killer could be so meek. "You must have been contacted by someone," the latter tried reasoning in a tone that assured there would be no violence in the interrogation.

"A woman called me," came the still-hesitant answer, "She told me to be here on this day and time."

"And…?" Petra said encouragingly, yet with a hint of impatience.

"And when I got here my spotter was waiting for me. She gave me the rifle and told me to shoot at you."

The Fratello was shocked by this news. "Spotter?" Sandro said, suddenly excited, "What spotter?" His mind raced back to the sound of shattering glass that he and Petrushka had heard earlier. Of course! he thought, silently cursing himself for this oversight, How else could he have known who to target?

"I-I tried telling the woman on the phone that I didn't know how to use a sniper rifle," the detainee answered, becoming nervous again at Alessandro's change in tone, "But she told me that it was alright and that she would send a spotter to help me."

Before Sandro could inquire further, Jean's voice came through his earpiece. "Ricci," Jean said, "Do you have the target? Is he alive?"

"Affirmative," Alessandro answered, "But he's not who we think he is."

"Understood. Get him out on the street. Osamu is here to evacuate us."

"Wilco," said Sandro and then, to Petra, "Let's get him out of here and hand him over to Jean."

Petrushka furrowed her brow and said, "Are you sure we want Jean doing the rest of the interrogation? I don't think our prisoner can handle that."

Sandro answered, "We don't have time to worry about that right now. The Satori know about this location and I'm almost certain they meant for us to catch their hired gun. The sooner we get him on the move, the better."

Without another word Petrushka held their detainee by the wrist and guided him out of the room. She stopped, however, when she saw a kind of scroll on the floor that looked completely out of place in the office environment. She picked it up and opened it.

Realizing that his cyborg wasn't following him, Alessandro stopped and turned back. "What's that?" he asked, indicating the paper in Petra's hands.

"It's got our names on it," Petrushka replied vaguely, a look of confusion on her face, "I think…it's a hit list."

"They knew where to find us," Alessandro mused with suspicion, "They knew how to bring us in and once they did, they conveniently left behind a list of targets with our names on it."

"It's insulting how obvious they made this," Petrushka added.

"Maybe not," Sandro responded, "The question is: is the captive meant to lead us to our deaths? Or will it be the list?"

"So…what should we do?"

Alessandro paused for a moment, weighing the dangers of the new baggage they carried with them. Finally, he was forced to make a choice. "Bring them both," he said simply.