Chapter Ten: Renegotiation

Lien and Rji were fraternal twins, and both immortals. I never learned much about their early lives or childhood, but I did watch them for a long period of time. Lien especially was a formidable warrior, but Rji showed the most promise. But she never wished to surpass her brother, or such was my observation. The primary reason for bringing my attention to them was their fame. At the time I liked nothing better than bringing down the high and mighty, and on top of all that they were good people, giving me reason enough to dislike them. They were very intimidating to rivals not just because they were both imposing fighters, but if anyone killed one, they would have to deal with the other.

Which is why I went after Lien. I tracked them for about a week out of their usual community and waylaid them shortly after dark on a night of a full moon. In those days I wore leather wrist guards under my clothes so I could pull off some visually impressive stunts like blocking and trapping someone's weapon between my wrists, mainly for intimidation but also as an alternative to simply moving out of the way. I was also accomplished at other less subtle forms of intimidation, several of which I employed that night. My tattoos were eye-catching enough, but when traced with a knife the blood made them look gruesome, even if the cuts did heal over right away. I had also started to develop the skill of interfering with other immortals' ability to perceive me, which meant I could sneak up on them, to an extent, and then reveal myself all at once. This was something I was still practicing, but it worked well that night.

Their alarm showed me I had been successful. With a hostile grin, I approached their campfire, showing them my empty hands. If they knew who I was they wouldn't be fooled, but they seemed to relax a bit.

"Who are you?" Lien challenged.

I grinned even more maliciously and said, "A student seeking a lesson from a great master." Even though they no longer really followed the strict rules of their natal society, they were still Asian, and to them anyone from south of the Tibetan plateau was sub-human. Add to that my double X chromosome and my tattoos marking me a criminal and my intent was to insult him, and it seemed to work.

Lien had lowered his knife, but now he raised it again. "Be careful what you request."

I laughed and said with as much disdain as I could muster, "Teach me then, and let us see how long it takes for student to surpass master!"

He attacked me at the same moment I attacked him. I had a golden opportunity to knock his knife from his hand, but didn't take it. I wanted to drag this fight out a little while.

Taking on other immortals as students is a tradition most of us upkeep. I never liked letting anyone that close, especially someone who might one day be an enemy. I taught a few, but only when I was running out of challenging kills. I was hoping one day that my students would be good enough to give me a good fight. Part of me hoped they would get good enough to kill me. But, to get that level of skill, they had to go off on their own, spend at least a few decades playing the game.

So I came up with a new scheme. Instead of teaching directly, I targeted some of the most talented fighters, immortal or no, and made them hate me. Vengeance can inspire some pretty impressive improvement in someone's abilities. One such target particularly haunted me when I regenerated a conscience. I killed nearly everyone he came in contact with to break through his belief that revenge hurts the avenger more than the victim. But Rji had no such conviction to break through, and she cared about her brother more than I cared about anything, and that was a conviction easily channeled into vengeance.

The plan was to put in a truly harrowing performance in fighting Lien, then kill him while his sister watched. It worked, in that our fight was convincingly well balanced, but when it came time to kill him his sister decided to join in. I should have seen that coming, but I had been planning on killing him quickly and in reality his knife just wasn't a sufficient weapon for quick beheadings. With Rji, the plan had been to put in all my effort and emphasize her inferior abilities. When she attacked, I wasn't sure what to do. Lien was still alive and would realize the disparity in the two fights despite exhaustion. I compromised and simply evaded her every attack while going after Lien again.

I settled for "killing" Lien, hoping it would buy me enough time to humiliate and taunt Rji if I left his knife in his chest. I only spent about fifteen minutes doing so. I had expected it to take a lot more than simple lines like "you're not even worth killing" to unsettle her, but I improvised and decided it would sting more if it were over quickly. I attacked her in earnest and left her barely conscious enough to watch me take her brother's head. I laughed at her then, thoroughly enjoying myself and the success of my rather transparent psychological abuse. I left and hoped when I saw her again she'd be a worthy opponent. But I never saw her again.

Frank is not happy with me.

"They're not children anymore. Pao is more than capable-"

"You're not listening to me, Frank. This is not a country or a terrorist organization or a sniper or all three that I'm worried about. This is a whole hell of a lot worse than that."

"So you're just going to ask them, and me for christ's sake, to trust a complete stranger while you run off?"

"No. Calm down. I'm asking you to trust me. If you don't you can be back in New York before the day is out."

"You can't get me involved in these things and then just tell me to leave! I trust you, Aiar, you know I do, but this is not on the level."

I can't tell him the truth. He'll try and stop me and I won't be able to make him understand. "Please, Frank. Please. Trust me. I need to know my children are not going to be used against me. Keep them safe."

"Do you really think I could keep Pao from chasing after you, even if I did want to stop her?"

This isn't working. I'm supposed to be having this fight with Pao, not Frank. He and I have had problems like this before. I've never exactly pulled rank on him, but I asserted my authority, even if it was all done between the lines. If appeals for trust aren't working, simple assertion of authority isn't going to cut it. The problem is, Frank is my friend. I shouldn't need to pull this kind of act on my friends. With a warning in my voice I say, "Please, Frank, I don't want to ask again."

He sighs. "I know you don't want to involve anyone in this more than you think necessary, but if you don't let us in, there's going to be trouble."

I really, really hope I'm not about to end a friendship. I draw myself up, which doesn't really improve my height, but is part of generating an aura of authority, which involves a number of subtle things, including a red glare in my eye. The rest is a matter of suggestion and posture. Frank's eyes widen and I see his fear and surprise. "I am a servant of the flame imperishable. Trouble has already come. Do not hinder me."

He searches for words, but before he finds them, instincts kick in to break our tableau. I grab Frank's shirt and yank him down behind the garbage cans as I hit the dirt as well. My instincts were just barely in the nick of time; a bullet hits a tree to my right, and I see a laser guider wandering down to try and find me again. Aside from an arrest warrant or formal inquiry, this is about the last thing I want to deal with. This is either a distraction so that someone can get at my kids while I'm dealing with the sniper, or else someone has been observing my Watcher inquiries a little more closely than I would have thought possible.

I take a peak between the garbage cans to see where the sniper is. It's a man, and he's moving along the hill behind this neighborhood, possibly to get another location or possibly to just get away. I don't recognize him, but I know he's not an immortal and I suspect he's just a hired gun. From this distance I can't get anything else. "Frank! In the house, now!"

Frank doesn't even argue. We make our way at a crouch to the side of the house, then to the nearest window. I help Frank in, and then before he can even yell after me I take off in pursuit of the sniper. I think I know where the guy's headed, and it's probably to get a clear shot into the house and of my car out front. I use the other houses as cover and hightail it along the line of the hills. This is what I'm good at; acting in the moment, concentrating on what's happening around me and making decisions without an instant's pause. The problem with this frame of mind is that morality doesn't always occur to me. It's why I never carry a gun.

Flanking the sniper, I abandon the protection of the houses and start up the hill. Sure enough, he was making for a point I would have chosen; view through the windows of Lucia's house and of the driveway all the way to my car. But now he's noticed me. He's a bit encumbered by his state-of-the-art equipment, but he doesn't drop it. He does start reaching for a handgun, though. Up close I can tell he's French, and has been shopping in Austria for his jacket. Whoever sent him has a lot of money to burn.

I have to dodge a few more bullets before I can get close enough to disarm him. And even then, he's formidable at his hand-to-hand. I manage to grab his gun by the silencer and kick him in the shoulder close to the rotor cuff. He drops the gun and his equipment as he struggles for balance. I don't give him the time to regain it and sweep his feet from under him. That almost buys me enough time to pin him, but he's too quick for that and rolls away to get back on his feet. I feign a punch to his face so I can kick his hip as he moves. Now his motion is limited and I can get close enough to break his collarbone. After that, he doesn't resist. I twist the arm on the side I broke his collarbone behind his back and push him to his knees.

"Who are you?" I ask in French. I'm sure his English is fluent, he might even have a southern California accent, but I prefer using his native language.

He just grits his teeth, trying not to let on just how much pain he's in. I shove him a bit, not enough to break his arm or dislocate his shoulder, but enough to make him start biting his tongue. "Who are you?" I repeat.

"John," he says in an American accent.

"Who sent you?" I don't care what his real name is.

He starts laughing, but only manages to redouble his pain. I don't want to be away from the house for too long, so I decide to interrogate him there. Besides, this may still be a ruse to get at them. I just hope whoever sent this guy didn't have a backup plan planned for the next few hours. He stifles a scream as I lever him up by his arm. "Come on, let's go," I say, still speaking French.

I nearly curse out loud when I see Frank and Pao kicking up dust in my tracks. I just hope I didn't loose a friend as well as failing to intimidate him.

Frank tried to find his second clip, but I had already jumped ahead to how in the name of McCarthy we were going to spin this. Paris and Branson had the guards scrambling to get out of the crossfire, or would have if Frank had been paying more attention to his ammo, and I was supposed to be keeping an eye on our escape route, which I was, just not with a hundred percent of my attention. The prisoner, Molly, was doing well under the circumstances, but she realized at about the same time I did that her rescue was practically pointless from a tactical advantage perspective.

"Come on," I hissed at Frank, "reload. If we can't get out of here quietly, we might as well get out quickly."

"I'm trying!" he hissed back.

"Don't you have a gun?" Molly asked me.

"No, and keep quiet, we don't want to give our position away."

"A little late for that," she shot back bitterly. For a grad student, she had balls.

I ignored her and glanced back at the hallway leading to the office door. Getting flanked would do none of us any good. Frank finally loaded up again, which gave me some maneuverability. Once he started firing again, I darted down the hall towards the office, checking all approaches for more guards, then moved into the office, staying at a crouch just in case.

"All clear," I said to the team, "fall back!" Once we had been discovered, radio silence hadn't been necessary.

Frank shoed Molly towards me, and I ushered her into the office. Branson showed up next, looking as pissed off as I felt. He glared at me like this fiasco was my fault, which was unfair but partly true. He broke the skylight instead of opening it like he was supposed to, but there was little point in covering our tracks anymore, and he needed to vent some frustration. I gave him a leg up through the skylight then helped Molly up after him. I dragged the office desk underneath to provide a better step up while Frank and Paris shoved their way through the door, still taking shots at the guards, who luckily hadn't yet been joined by any military. I helped Paris up, then let him pull me up, and Frank brought up the rear. Once Frank was up, Branson threw something explosive, maybe a grenade, down the skylight and Paris and we ran, practically dragging Molly behind us.

Fire safety codes had never been well enforced in the old Soviet nations, but this prison had a fire escape by some miracle of civil planning. Our original plan was to go down and make our way to a downtown nightclub where we had transportation, but that took time we no longer had. Now the plan was up, and the transportation was being called in by Paris. Unfortunately, there were a lot of things that could go wrong with this backup plan, which is why I had been on this mission at all – to ensure secrecy. I had overestimated my new partner, unfortunately, as Branson was quick to remind me. That was the other problem to our backup plan; it gave us time to yell at each other.

"What the hell were you thinking! There are about five thousand other agents that could have done his job, and done it right! Why bring the FNG? We've been working this for nearly a month, and he blows it in a single night!"

"How is this my fault? There were a thousand and one things that could have gone wrong, and any of us could have been the ones to screw it up just by breathing the wrong way!"

"This was your call, your op, you chose the personnel, and you should have given it just a little more thought. Jesus! This isn't some drug bust in the Bronx!" He shot Frank a particularly disdainful look. He was right of course, but now was not the time to rub my face in it. We had just reached the topmost part of the roof and needed to be alert.

"Back off. Everyone was new to the job once. Just keep an eye out for our ride."

I moved back to the top of the fire escape and glanced down. No one yet, but the night was young. Branson covered the door to the stairwell, which was the only other roof access, and Frank came over to help me cover the fire escape. Paris wanted nothing to do with our shouting match and stuck with the girl in the most sheltered part of the roof he could find.

Frank was about as irate as Branson. He crouched on the other side of the fire escape glowering, occasionally opening his mouth to say something but always closing it again. Finally I couldn't take it any more.

"You screwed up. Don't! Don't defend it, don't deny it, don't even tell me how at least we've got the girl, and do not tell me this is why I ought to carry a gun. Just suck it up and try to realize that he's actually got a good reason to be mad at you. And don't say it."

Frank looked taken aback but not in the least abashed. "Say what?" was all he said, at least.

"That this is actually a lot like a drug bust."

Frank snorted and tried to suppress his laughter, but I wasn't amused. I hated having a partner, and not just because of Frank. They were all a hindrance, no matter how good they were. I didn't even like working with a team like Paris and Branson. I knew it was always useful to have another set of eyes and ears, but there was only so much help they could be before they started getting in the way. Skill and professionalism had nothing to do with it, really. I worked better as a solo act and that was all there was to it. I gave Frank another resentful glance, which he didn't notice, and scanned the sky once more before returning my attention to the fire escape.

"Get back in the house."

"Who the hell is that?"

"I said back in the house!"

"Are you al-"

"If there's more we need to be in the house."

"More what?"

I give Pao a glare that would have shut most people up, but Pao glares back and keeps pushing.

"Who is that guy?"

I ignore her and keep marching the sniper to the house. Luckily Frank and Pao come with. As we get through the front door, I turn my attention back to Pao. "You might want to consider showing some compassion for another human being in pain," I say in Chinese. I still haven't talked to her about those two men she killed in New York, and I'm still not sure exactly why she killed them. She doesn't rise to the jab and goes to cover the windows with some of the sheets Lucia has around for painting. Frank is more interested in the sniper.

"Having fun?" he asks me, eyeing the stranger.

"Shut up." I shove the sniper into a chair and start removing his weapons. Another gun, a switchblade, a real knife, a hypodermic, and a lighter. I want to do a more thorough search, but I also want his equipment. Making a split second decision, I call Frank over and ask him to go get the guy's stuff. He hesitates for a second but decides to do as I ask. I start tying up the sniper. I make sure he's uncomfortable, but not in significant pain. Then I go about searching more thoroughly for weapons.

Pao, Ben, and Christian are all asking me questions, but even though I hear them I'm not processing them. I want to know who sent this guy and I want to know now. As expected he has no identification on him, but he does have something in a medicine vial that I'm willing to bet is either an anesthetic or paralyzing agent. He's also got something that worries me greatly; a homing device that looks deactivated but might not be. I examine it closely and try to gauge the sniper's reaction. He's doing a bang up job of pretending he's in too much pain to notice what I'm doing, but I can tell he's worried. What he's worried about is harder to tell. I pocket it and decide to deposit it somewhere public and busy next chance I get. Unfortunately I don't recognize make, model, or source. Now is time to try and read the answer to my primary question from his eyes.

"Hey." I grab his chin with my hand and let him see my anger. I catch his eyes and keep them. "Who sent you?" I ask again in French. He looks away. He's about to lie. "Hey!" I bring his eyes back to me. "Who sent you?" There it is, a memory. The way his eye muscles move and other facial tells let me see the name he's remembering. Guilfoyle. Well that's weird. What did I do to piss off the mob? I avoid all dealings with strictly criminal organizations if I can help it. Maybe Guilfoyle's a middleman?

"Why does Guilfoyle want me dead?" I really just want to scare him; I don't expect him to know why. I've never known a hired gun to ask why. I didn't when I was one. Sure enough, he's shocked and he doesn't have anything more on this subject to hide. But he's still dangerous and I'm not entirely sure how to nullify that and keep him alive at the same time. There's always kneecapping, but that's a bit extreme. I decided to see what's in the vial. I pick up the hypodermic and take 20 c.c.s and place the needle near the sniper's upper arm. He looks petrified, so it must be something more sinister than anesthetic.

"Are you going to tell me what this is, or shall I inject you and find out?" I ask.

"A hyperalgesic."

I raise an eyebrow. Torture was in his repertoire, and might have been intended for this job. Pao grabs my arm and I realize I've been ignoring everyone.

"You going to tell us what's going on now?" she asks, looking unreasonably mad at me. I've been talking to the sniper in French, but beyond that she has no reason.

Frank shows up with the sniper's guns and bag. I yank my arm away from Pao's grip and take the equipment from Frank. I'm not really expecting to find anything too informative, but I still need an inventory. "Pao, I don't suppose you know anything the mob, do you?"

"The mob?"

"I didn't think so." I sigh. "Me neither, not really. Apparently I'm the target of a mob hit, and I have no idea why."

She stares at me. Ben, Frank, Christian, and Lucia stare at me, too. "Why does a mob hit man speak French?" Lucia asks me.

I ignore the question, letting them work it out for themselves, and start examining the sniper's stuff. He has the latest and most expensive in weaponry, no surprise there. His stuff is from all over Europe, except for his GPS software on his mobile. Looks like he was in Los Angeles recently and not just the airport. How recently "recently" is I'm not sure. He has a dozen passports that were sewn into the lining of his bag, each with a different name. His French passport was stamped in JFK two days ago and his US passport was stamped in LAX three weeks ago and two days before that SYD. Rji has been living in Australia the last few decades - she could be behind this. But Australia's a big country. I should probably assume I'm not going to get any answers from the sniper.

"I'm sorry I've brought this danger to your home, Lucia," I say as I start dismantling the guns. But Lucia's probably more concerned with getting answers out of me than apologies, but I don't give her the chance. "Frank, I don't suppose you know anything about this, do you?" A PI in New York that knows nothing about the mob is hard to buy.

"I recognize the name Guilfoyle, he works with the Kellies. I got nothing to do with them, though." He's hiding something, but I don't think he's actually lying.

I haven't kept up with my mob politics. Everything I know about the Kellies is a decade out of date. Unless they start interfering with politics on a larger scale I don't pay attention. "Pao?" I ask again. "Still nothing?"

I can see the two men she killed in her eyes, but then they're replaced by defiance. "No," she says firmly. I feel a stab of sympathy for her.

"Well, this could have something to do with the arms dealers. Indirectly, anyway. Lucia, you want to hear the back story?"

Lucia doesn't really want to be involved, but her curiosity gets the better of her, and I relate what I know about Louisville. Christian's the only one who doesn't understand. But I cut across his questions.

"Here's what happens next."