Listening to the sound of rap music blaring out of a passing car radio, Bender shifted the gun in his hands as he kept watch out of an eighth story window. There was no sign of the blonde that his boss seemed to be so worried about, either alone or with another woman, and to tell the truth, he was feeling pretty relieved. Though he'd never admit it out loud, he really didn't want to meet up with her again. As he watched the wind blow an old newspaper along the street below, he decided that they were long gone by now. Their apartment had been in this building, hadn't it? Someone behind him cleared their throat, and he turned to see a young dark-haired woman dressed in black. She cocked her head to the side.
"Excuse me, this is like really embarrassing," she began, twirling her hair around her fingers, "but all the doors in this building look exactly the same. Can you, like, tell me where the bathroom is?" Confusion barely had time to register before Jondy swung in through the window from the fire escape above. She grabbed his head and rammed it against the wall with a 'thud." He dropped.
Poor guy, Jondy thought to herself as she watched Max remove the clip from his gun. He always seems to get knocked off his feet whenever I'm around. She glanced back out the window. No one on the ground below seemed to have seen them. Good.
Silently, they left the room and crept through the shadowy hallway. There were too many guns in this place, Jondy lamented. If there were more than just the two of them, or if they had been carrying weapons of their own, the odds might be a bit more in their favor, but Max refused to carry a gun, and though Jondy wasn't entirely opposed to them, she didn't really like them that much either. She'd carried one on a few occasions since the escape, but not anytime within the last five years or so. They brought back too many memories that she wanted to forget.
Thankfully, most of the firepower seemed to be stationed outside to monitor who came into the building. Since they were already inside, they wouldn't have to worry about that, at least not until the time came to get back out. She sighed. They had to sneak into the room where Logan was being kept, untie him, and get him back out without being caught, not an easy task considering that she was the only one who could touch him. Not to mention the fact that getting out would probably involve scaling the side of a building and leaping across an alley from the top of one building and onto the roof of another. She shook her head. First things first. Get him untied. Then worry about getting him out.
In an apartment farther down the hall, Perez had decided that Eyes Only had had enough time to think about his offer. With Fly and MacIntyre on his heels, he entered the dark room, an unlit cigarette clenched between his lips. The man sat on the floor in the same spot he had been in earlier, though he had shifted positions somewhat. He glared down at the man for a moment, wondering again about the contraption on his legs. He and MacIntyre had inspected it closely, but decided that it couldn't be used as a weapon. It seemed to be some sort of a brace.
"So," he asked conversationally, "been thinking about our little deal?"
Jondy and Max slithered around a corner and approached the door of the apartment where Logan was being held. Max easily dispatched the guard at the door with a well-placed elbow, and they snuck into the dark interior of the old apartment. The man stationed in the apartment's kitchen caught a glimpse of them, but was unable to fire a shot before he was silenced in a similar manner. On the street below gunfire suddenly erupted. Max and Jondy glanced at each other before diving into the shadows. Whatever was happening downstairs would be heard, and someone would be coming to inspect any second now.
"I'm not making any deals," Logan said through clinched teeth. Death or no death, he was not going to help this worthless . . .
The silence was pierced by the sound of gunfire on the street below.
"What the hell is that?" Perez roared. He turned to MacIntyre. "Get the hell out there, and see what's going on!" MacIntyre went running out through the door, while Fly moved to stand guard just outside of it. Perez turned back to Logan. "I hope you don't have any friends with some stupid idea of coming to your rescue," he sneered. He had no way of knowing that as Logan lay there listening to the roar of gunfire outside the window, he was praying for the exact same thing.
MacIntyre crept out into the kitchen of the apartment. Standing in the doorway, he searched the room for signs of movement. Seeing Henry's feet sticking out from behind the counter, he swore beneath his breath. He scanned the room again, and seeing a figure in the shadows, he began to sneak up on it.
As a general rule of fighting, it is never wise to put someone who is shorter than you in a headlock from behind. Jondy learned that lesson during a training session at Manticore at the age of six, when she had tried that exact move on Brin. Her sister had merely leaned forward, flipping her over her shoulders, and sending her flying against the far wall of the training room. Zack had learned it from Jondy several weeks later, when he made that same mistake and ended up against the same wall. Unfortunately, no one had ever taught MacIntyre this lesson, and so the moment his arm closed around Jondy from behind, his fate was sealed. Throwing her weight forward, she pitched him over her shoulders and through the living room window. There was the sound of shattering glass, followed several seconds later by the sound of MacIntyre's body hitting the pavement eight stories below. Jondy peeked out around the jagged edges of the broken window. A pool of blood was already forming around his head. She shuddered at the sight and turned away. Manticore training or no Manticore training, she still hated killing people.
Max and Jondy crept back through the hallway, sliding against the walls and staying as silent as possible. Spotting Fly at the door, they shared a look. No hand signals or words were needed this time. They knew what to do.
Jondy made the first move, jumping out at Fly and spinning him into the doorway of the room. Reacting on pure instinct, Perez drew his gun and fired, hitting Fly in the chest as Jondy dodged out of the path of the bullet. Fly was dead before he hit the ground. Speeding into the room, Max kicked the gun from Perez's grasp, sending it flying off into the air before he could get off another shot. Reaching out, Jondy caught it neatly in her hand. It seemed to Perez as though Max had sent it in her direction on purpose, which she had. Calmly Jondy walked over to untie Logan. Perez wasn't sure what to do. The woman in front of him was small, but she was strong and quick, and he didn't have another weapon on him. After a moment of thought, he tried to move forward, but he received a sharp kick in the stomach and thought better of it. He tried to back away but found his escape blocked by the only window in the room, and there were eight floors between him and the ground below. Jondy lay the gun on the floor and began to untie Logan's wrists.
"What do you think you're doing here?" he asked Max, who was still crouched in a fighting position, keeping both eyes trained on Perez. It took all of her self-control not to turn to look at Logan, to check him for injuries, to assure herself that he was really okay, but once her eyes fell on him, she knew she wouldn't be able to turn away, and her attention needed to remain on Perez right now.
"Saving your sorry ass," she replied without shifting her gaze. "You're welcome. Don't I get a thank you?" Though her words were sharp, Jondy could hear the catch in Max's voice. She's scared witless at the thought of losing him, she thought. Logan rubbed at his wrists.
"What were you thinking? You could have been-"
"Sorry, but my sister's a little busy right now," Jondy interrupted. "You two can do the cute little reunion thing later, okay? Now hold still." She smacked him on the leg as she finished with the ties on his ankles. She knew he couldn't feel it, but she felt like she needed to make a point. Perez glanced from the blonde bitch to her sister and then back again. He was suddenly very furious. All of his plans ruined because she hadn't just died when she was supposed to. One more bullet could have prevented all of this. "What are you?" he asked her. "Something from hell?"
For the first time since entering the room, she focused her attention on Perez. Cold hatred seeped from her eyes, and everyone in the room saw it. She thought briefly of Manticore. "You might say that I was born and bred there." She narrowed her eyes to slits. Her hand crept along the floor to mold around the handle of the gun she had laid beside her.
"You should have just stayed there. Better yet, you should have just died in LA with that worthless, nosey, son of a bitch that you were following around." He grinned evilly. "You were just his little whore, anyway, and that's all you'll ever be."
Jondy didn't realize the gun in her hand was raised until she saw the startled expression on Max's face, but that didn't stop her. Suddenly all she could remember was sitting with Brian as they watched the sunrise, kissing him on the pier after they'd dragged themselves out of the Pacific . . . and every moment of that night that followed after. Lying in his arms and thinking, well, not really thinking anything beyond the fact that he was very nice to share a pillow with. She remembered the sadness in Brian's beautiful eyes when he pleaded with her not to leave that morning, and the joy in their depths as their eyes had met in the marketplace. She remembered standing in Zane's bathroom laughing as she stared at the little plastic stick in her hand, the pastel symbol at it's tip changing her life forever. And then, from the depths of her memory came the most painful thought of all, the memory of holding his dead body in her arms as his blood soaked through her clothes, mixing with her own, though she hadn't realized it at the time. Mumbling over and over how much she loved him before everything had gone black. And she remembered awakening in Zane's apartment and wondering why she couldn't have just died too.
Here, thought Jondy, was Brian's killer, the man who had ruined her life, the monster who had taken it all away from her. Briefly, she imagined pulling the trigger, imagined the bullet entering his forehead and shattering the window on the other side. In her mind's eye she saw bits of blood and brain covering the windowsill. Or maybe a better shot would be through his eyes, those eyes that haunted her nightmares as she gazed up at him from the street, Brian's lifeless body in her arms. Two quick shots and they would both be gone, those horrible ugly orbs. She wondered how much blood would be splattered on the walls with two shots? How big would the holes be then? Would any of his cursed face be left? Would that horrible grin still be there every time she closed her eyes?
Another memory came then, a memory from farther into her past. Running through the woods, the feel of tree branches slapping her face as she ran blindly after the man, a predator after her prey. The man's screams echoing in her ears, the taste of his blood in her mouth as she and her brothers and sisters wrenched his life away. That image haunted her nightmares, too, much as it ran through her mind now. Only this time it wasn't the convict's face she saw. It was Perez's.
From his place in the corner, Logan shivered suddenly at the look in Jondy's eyes. He felt his blood freeze at the coldness in their depths as, for the first time in his life, Logan found himself face to face with a cold-blooded killer. This, he realized, was not the young woman he had met several days earlier. This was X5-210, the killer she had left behind on a cold winter night as she climbed a perimeter fence in Wyoming and started her own life on the other side.
Max stood frozen, watching the look in her sister's blue eyes. She felt the breath catch in her throat, but she couldn't move. She knew what Jondy was thinking, just as she knew that if Jondy pulled the trigger, there would be no going back. It was a truth that Max lived with every day. Like Jondy, she had been born to kill, her genes spliced and replicated to perfection for that one purpose. They had been taught from the time they left the nursery how to do it, how to kill, quickly, efficiently, happily, and without a second thought. It was a part of her life that Max had left behind long ago, but Jondy was about to cross a dangerous line . . . and as Max stood watching in horror, she couldn't seem to make a single move to stop her.
But Jondy was unaware of their reactions. Images flashed through her mind, things that might have been but never were. Coming home to find Brian alive and well and confessing her love to him, as well as her mistake in leaving. The feel of his hand on her stomach as he felt their baby's first kicks. Lying in bed with her newborn in her arms and Brian's lips on hers. Taking their baby out to see her first sunrise. Her baby's first birthday . . . and every one after. A lifetime full of awakening every morning in Brian's arms . . .
The vision of Perez's blood staining the windowsill flashed through her mind once more, and gritting her teeth and setting her jaw, she raised the gun, took aim, and pulled the trigger.