II: Cugini

"So what do you think of our new fratello?" Amadeo said to Priscilla as the two staff members enjoyed their afternoon break in the summer haze. He had to lean close to her to make himself heard over the girl's target practice, not that he needed an excuse as the self-proclaimed 'Agent of Love.'

The brunette data collector squealed and clapped her hands. "Her name's Kess, right? She's so cuuuute! Sharp as a knife too. She just needs more training and some nicer clothes. T-shirts and dark slacks every day! So boring. As for Beto ... hmm. I don't think he's said more than two words to me. I hear he's a bit of a grouch."

Amadeo clucked his tongue. "No kidding. Yesterday I asked him if he'd ever met a woman as pretty as you in the Carabinieri, just trying to make conversation, and he growled at me and walked away! How rude."

"He's one of Giorgio's old friends from the Col Moschin, right? I guess they're a pretty serious bunch."

The former Marine chuckled heartily. "Yeah, old Giorgi got Lorenzo to offer him the three-year plan."

Priscilla tilted her head.

"You know, the same deal Claudio got? Three years and then back on the force. I bet he cracks up just like Claudio did, too. Acts all high and mighty, no sense of humor ... I can already see it coming."

"You think so?" Priscilla turned back and studied the fratello again, squinting in the afternoon sunlight. The gruff, bearlike man was putting Kess through her paces on the outdoor shooting range—he eschewed the indoor one, saying it would make her soft—and her shots were missing, sometimes badly. He was making his displeasure known, barking orders and corrections, occasionally stepping in when his outdated gun jammed or he thought she was depending on the sight. But he never lost his temper, never walked away from her, never raised his hand to her as Gian had done with Rico several times. If he had no patience for socializing with anyone in the Agency, at least he had some for Kess. "What do you want to bet, Amadeo?"

He laughed again. "I'll bet you a tea party with Henrietta he won't last six months. That's the over/under. Agreed?"

"You're on, lover boy," she chirped. "And just to make it more interesting ... the loser has to buy her the tea set! Or losers, if you want to let the rest of the office into the pool."

"I'd be delighted, darling. Now, with that settled, how about a date?"

"No."

It took a few days for Kess to become reasonably accurate in outdoor shooting. Silvano chose to reward her with a change of pace in the indoor practice area, where the cyborgs were required to run through a concrete maze of corridors, shooting threatening targets (cutouts of gunmen, mobsters and such) while sparing non-threatening ones (unarmed women, children, hostages). It was a stiff test of a cyborg's speed, thoroughness, and ability to distinguish between friend and foe.

Kess failed her first attempt ignominiously. She took the straightest path, missed several rooms, and fired at everything that moved. She rushed out the exit to find an apoplectic Silvano, who seized her by the hand and led her back into the maze to show her everything she did wrong.

"Run it again," he snapped when they were finally back at the entrance. "And again, until I tell you to stop."

That was five hours ago. Now, with evening slipping away into night, she was still at it and Silvano was still supervising every move. It was nearly as tedious as pushing papers, but he hunkered down with a pack of MS Rosses and a caffè corretto and continued to watch.

"You sure are going all out," said a familiar voice from the observation room doorway. "But nothing less from old Beto, am I right?"

Silvano cracked a smile as he turned about. "Giorgi. I knew you couldn't hide from me forever."

"Who's hiding, il commilitone? You've hardly been by the office since I got you in here. Though I see you've got your work cut out for you." Giorgio's rather plain appearance belied his considerable talents. Behind the long face, thin brows, and short dark hair lurked a clever mind and years of military experience. He first met Silvano in basic training and they had been good friends ever since.

"In more ways than one." Silvano shook his hand warmly, then turned back to the window and gestured to Kess who was beginning the course yet again. He'd given her minimal direction over the loudspeaker and let her figure out the rest by herself. Making her overly dependent on his orders would backfire the first time they got separated during a mission. "You know all these people are insane."

"For good reason. Sane people don't make it in crime-fighting anymore, Beto. They either drop out, or drop dead. After eight years on the force you must know that much."

"I know it doesn't have to be that way. And when they take me back as an inspector I intend to prove it."

Giorgio smiled and shook his head. "Still haven't gotten over Luigi, I see."

"You remember?"

"How could I not? It was one of the first things you told me about yourself in the barracks, and you've been looking for the killer ever since. You have to face it, old friend: no one can find Benito Salvatore anymore unless he wants to be found. He's too high up."

"We'll see," Silvano whispered. He looked on as Kess blazed through the course, systematically sweeping every room and blasting every hostile target while leaving noncombatants untouched. Something flickered inside of him then, a glimmer of the youthful fire he'd once possessed, and he found himself nodding along with every shot.

"Eccellente," Giorgio remarked.

"She ought to be. She was so poor earlier I had her keep at it most of the day." He let her finish before speaking into the intercom. "That is enough, Kess. Join me in observation immediately."

She nodded, holstering her weapon and jogging up the stairs. Moments later the door opened and she walked in, smelling of gunpowder with sweat dripping down her forehead.

"This is Giorgio Alighieri, a senior agent for Section 2. Greet him."

"Hello, sir," she said breathlessly, inclining her head. "I am Kess."

Giorgio smiled. "Welcome to the team, Kess. I hope to see you join the others in group training soon. The other girls will enjoy meeting you."

Kess hesitated, seeming a tad unsure. "Understood."

"Well, I'll let you and your handler finish up here. Good night, Kess. Beto, catch me at breakfast tomorrow. Gian passed on some documents he wants you to look over, and the Director thinks your girl has earned a day off." With a wave, Giorgio left the observation room.

Silvano gestured to the table where a towel and a bottle of water stood waiting. "You may sit. Drink if you are thirsty." When she obeyed gratefully and drank the entire bottle without stopping, he cleared his throat. "You are improving."

"I live to serve the Agency, sir," she replied. It was just the sort of answer he wanted, professional and impersonal, and she probably knew that. But there was something else in her eyes, something that looked a lot like "thank you"—a distinctly human eagerness to please.

He looked away from it uncomfortably. "I'll get straight to the point. You came this far with an old piece-of-crap service pistol that I quit using years ago; I think you've fulfilled the training requirements well enough to use your own sidearm."

She watched with great interest as he reached into his inner suit pocket and produced a catalog. Inside were handguns of every stripe from arms manufacturers around the globe. He placed it on the table in front of her.

"Take a look at that when you have some time, and ... "

Silvano trailed off in disbelief as she began leafing through it right away, her eyes darting across the pages and absorbing every word. Even looking back several times to compare different models, she blew through the whole thing in minutes. Then she returned to a picture near the end and pointed it out: a Jericho 941 Semi-Compact with a polymer frame, developed by an Israeli manufacturer with assistance from an Italian firm.

"I have chosen," Kess said proudly. It was the first decision she had ever made.

"All that training with no down time? Spending seven nights in your recovery room?" the older girl exclaimed with a shake of her head. Her blonde pigtails whipped anxiously about her neck. "No wonder we haven't seen much of you! Welcome to Section 2. I'm Triela, and my handler is Victor Hilshire."

Kess looked down and shuffled her feet. Something felt familiar about this, and yet not; Dr. Bianchi said she lived twelve years of her life somewhere else and so she must have met other girls before but, having no recollection of this, she wasn't sure what to do. "Hello. I am Kess."

"Yes, you said that once already," another cyborg with long dark hair chimed in from the top bunk bed. She had just now looked up from the large book she was reading, and was studying the new girl through her glasses. "Don't you know anything else?"

"Be nice, Claes." Triela glared at her and patted Kess on the shoulder. "Don't mind her, she's always like that. I think she likes books more than people. These are Rico and Henrietta, both about your age."

Kess sized them up quickly as they greeted her. Rico was a serene-looking girl with an effortless smile and dull blue eyes under a dark blonde fringe; the brunette Henrietta was friendly too, but more reserved and self-conscious. Comparing the two of them side by side, Kess began to understand the different "levels" of conditioning she had heard about. At least, conditioning was what Dr. Bianchi called it. Beto called it brainwashing when he thought she couldn't hear.

"Rico's handler is Gian Croce, and Henrietta's is Giuse Croce; they're actually brothers, although they don't talk about it much," Triela explained. "Each handler and cyborg team is called a fratello, because they become like family. Claes had a handler too, but he moved on, so she does other jobs for the Agency now."

Strange. How could somebody responsible for his charge's training and performance simply "move on?" She could not imagine living without Beto. And then there was that word ...

"We had another handler named Marco and a girl called Angelica, but he moved on too after she died," Rico added. She sounded quite unmoved, as though she were discussing the weather, but the other girls looked sad and glanced at Kess out of the corners of their eyes like they didn't want her to notice.

Dr. Bianchi mentioned that parts from a previous model were used in Kess' design. Could that previous model have been Angelica? Kess began to feel more uncomfortable than ever, standing in the middle of the dorm with the other girls all gone silent.

"Why do you call them 'handlers'?" she asked. She was a little curious, but mainly she just wanted to change the subject. Their peculiarities didn't really matter to her. All that mattered was fulfilling the Agency's expectations.

Triela motioned for her to sit down at a small table. "Well, that's what they do. They give us orders, provide us with weapons, and sort of hold our hands through the missions ... maybe literally, in Henrietta's case."

"That's not true!" the brunette protested, blushing.

Kess found herself relaxing as she sat down and the girls' banter continued. They seemed to get along well, and they must be very good at their jobs to have worked together for this long. Eventually Henrietta brought the conversation back to Beto, again mentioning him as the new "handler" and asking if she liked him. She found it was not an easy question to answer.

"He is my supervisor," she said slowly. "And he spends most of his time teaching me to be effective in the field."

"Naturally. That's what he's paid to do," Claes said flatly.

"Even Hilshire does that much for me," added Triela with a smirk. "But how do you feel about him as a person?"

Kess did not understand. Lacking a large number of other people to compare with Beto, she had not formed a clear picture of his personality. Nor did she know why it was considered important. Casting about nervously for an answer, she saw Rico looking at her with another smile—but this one seemed more genuine. Perhaps she understood the feeling.

"He allowed me to choose my weapon," she said finally. "A Jericho pistol. I like that about him."

Triela, Henrietta, and Claes seemed nonplussed, but Rico was nodding eagerly. "I see. Gian lets me choose my weapons also. The CZ-75 is my favorite, and the Jericho was modeled on it."

"Is that so? Then perhaps, in a way, the two of you are cousins!" joked Triela.

Kess returned Rico's smile, and a wonderful warm feeling stole over her. She could not identify it; it was something new, something she wanted to keep.

"I would like that," she said.