Through the underground's network of information trading and gossip, Malik received word that a new crew had set up shop in Sofia, Bulgaria. They were encroaching on her space, on her operations. She would allow them to remain if they came to heel under her. If they resisted, she'd cut off all their supplies, all their buyers, until they'd either have to acquiesce or leave.

She'd sent them a message, set up a friendly meeting. Their boss had accepted, and told her to show up alone. Vaclav warned her not to. He'd heard chatter about this crew from some of his clients, had told her that it wouldn't go well if she went alone, that these were some of the more sexist ones.

She'd told him that she was used to that, and he insisted, "Please, Mal, hire a bodyguard or something at least." She'd sighed, wondered why he was pushing this so much, and said she'd look into it.

Not that Malik knew any bodyguards. At least, not any that were trustworthy enough to stay loyal to her once paid, and who couldn't be bought off by an interest with a fatter wallet.

The thought reminded her of Jensen, Icarus, who'd made it clear that he wouldn't take a hit on her, and who seemed like the kind who wouldn't switch targets for a higher price mid-hunt. If she had to hire a guard, he might do. He'd done the odd job for her here and there, generally an intimidation of any of her mechanics – and paid for with crates of Sarifaugs delivered straight to him. Even Vaclav had met him, a tune-up on a sticking wrist, at which point he'd talked with her about him the whole flight instead of reading her one of his books. Apparently, Icarus liked him, because he came back more than once, and none of her other mechanics could say the same. He even asked for Vaclav's infolink, which he gave readily. Malik was impressed, to say the least.

So, she called him.

"Jensen?" Casual, checking over her plane and thumbing a spot where the paint had worn away. The meeting was tonight, which might be too short-term for Jensen to agree – but, well. She wasn't sure he'd even entertain the idea. Asking an assassin to be a bodyguard? She was ready for him to laugh.

"Malik." He answers, sounding as affable as ever. "Mechanic?" It's the only reason she calls, after all.

"No, I, uh. Something off-menu, I guess." She finds herself scrubbing at the paint spot, nervous? Why is she nervous? She's used to doing these jobs alone, what does it matter if he says no? Maybe Vaclav's worry had gotten to her.

He remains silent, waiting for her to continue.

"I've got a meeting with a crew boss tomorrow, was wondering if I could buy your service as a bodyguard."

The silence hangs for a moment.

"I don't guard," he answers, a little terse. She can't see his face, wonders if she should have tried to meet him. His expression would be inscrutable too, she's sure.

"I figured you'd say that. Thanks anyway." Quickly hanging up. A rough sigh, scrubbing a hand over her face. Leaving the paint rub and climbing into the cockpit. Might as well get this over with. She pulls her headset on, texts Vaclav that she didn't need a bodyguard, she'd be fine.

Vaclav called immediately, and she ignored it, firing up the jets. This would be no different to any other deal she made on her own.

This crew was surprisingly large for being so new, and had footholds all throughout the city, instead of having one centralized location they were stuck working from. An interesting operation to be sure, and she could see them doing really good business if they agreed to work with her. A big if, depending on who they were. If it was a local Bulgarian heading the crew as Vaclav feared, she'd have a hard time getting them to agree to work for her, particularly if their boss was a man (as most were - sexism wasn't dead in the underground). If it was an outsider, on the other hand, she might run into the issue of them not knowing who she was. Particularly if, far-fetched as it might be, it was an American. She'd run to ground in the United States, left them to other crews. Didn't need her name getting passed around there any more than it might already be. It was a wonder Jensen knew her name at all, excepting his own ties with Sarif.

Malik flies to this meeting with the same confidence she flies to all of her meetings – with a loaded gun and a very delicious offer. None of her clients ever complained that she was short-changing them, or forcing them to work for her through fear. Sure, she coerced some of them through harsh business tactics, but they eventually realized what a good deal she struck.

She started to think that this deal might not be working out exactly the way she'd expected it to – or hoped - when her radar picked up more than one person at the landing site. Clearly they didn't anticipate she would actually come alone, even though she'd said she would. Or that she expected them to do the same in return. She'd extended a miniscule amount of trust and it was already being rebuffed.

She landed the VTOL on the helipad, stepped out into the whipping wind. Her flightsuit, the closest thing to bulletproof that she could fly in, snapped against her legs as she left the side bay door open. A sign that she didn't expect the conversation to take long – and that she had nothing to hide in the plane from whomever she was meeting with.

The leader she was meeting with stepped forward into the light, and she realized it was indeed a large, Bulgarian man. Inwardly cursed her luck, and revises her script. Added a 'my boss wants' to all of the sentences she'd planned to say. This would go over better if he thought she was just a pretty messenger to some man in a distant city. He might be offended the 'boss' didn't come himself, but she might be able to play around it anyway. She'd damn well try, at least.

"I was told you'd be coming alone," she says, pointedly looking at the two crew members behind the man.

"And I was told I'd be meeting with the boss," the man rumbled back. Arms crossed threateningly. Holding no weapons – he didn't need to, with the two behind him armed to the teeth. He was enough of a weapon on his own, too – arms augmented to the shoulders, at least as far as she could see. He wore a bullet-proof vest over his chest, and she spied at least a handful of combat augmentations installed into the oversize arms. They were painted red, no attempt made to pretend they were flesh and bone.

"He couldn't make it. I'm authorized to make deals in his place," she says, crossing her arms too. Mirroring his pose. The way she announces this makes it clear that the 'boss' didn't come for the same reason he did not actually come alone. Neither of them trusted each other. Chest puffed up and making herself as tall as she could – though it was nothing compared to the bear of a man that he was. He towered over her and she just barely had to crane her neck to meet his gaze, eyebrows turned down in what looked like it might be a permanent scowl.

"Your boss lets women arrange trade deals? No wonder he's called the Phoenix – with how often you'd fuck it up, he'd have to keep coming back from the dead." The crewmembers behind him don't make any noise, but they look suddenly smug.

She should have called the deal off the moment she realized what kind of person was leading this crew. Should have expected the sexism and known better than to engage.

"If you're not interested in being civil or doing business-"

"Oh, did I upset you? Can you even make deals when you are so prone to emotion?" He steps closer to her, crowds her space, and it takes all she has to not instinctively back away and shrink smaller. Making herself a smaller target would only make her vulnerability larger in this man's eyes. She can see the calculating glint in his eyes – he's trying to goad her. Get a reaction out of her.

She doesn't need to play his game. She'll starve them out of Europe.

"Thank you for taking the time to come meet with me. It seems we won't be doing business after all." She's barely finished her sentence when the man's guards are stepping forward. She'd reach to shake his hand but she thinks he might take offense at the lesser sex treating him like an equal. She takes a step to turn and leave, confident they will let her go. That they would not dare hinder her.

Wrong.

As she pivots, she feels them grab her by the arms. She twists neatly, pulls them down as she crouches and throws one off. Spins to punch the other one, and, while he's stunned, pulls her gun. Aims it at the leader.

"Wrong move." Her voice is low, threatening. No one tried to assault the Phoenix and lived to tell the tale.

He didn't balk. Or look worried in the least. The two she'd knocked off start picking themselves up, and she reacts immediately. Buries a bullet in each of their heads. The leader still doesn't look worried. She hears the smooth rustle of glass cloaks disengaging, and realizes she is far more surrounded than her radar had suggested.

She's counting hostiles and trying to plot a path back to her plane when her gun is knocked out of her hand and she barely manages to kick the first one that tries to grab her. They don't gun her down, which implies that they want her to live, or at the very least live long enough for whatever else they are planning. Feels the ring of hostiles closing in on her from her periphery, focus narrowed down to the men closest. Weapons down in an attempt to gab and subdue her – the ones further out may have guns pointed at her. She lands an elbow on the second to approach her, but as he's going down two more step forward. Hands land on her arms and pull them painfully behind her. She kicks off the ground, tries to throw them off. They manage to ride out the jerk and hold her up, so her feet can't find purchase.

The leader steps forward, sticks an arm out, palm open, at one of his men. They hand him a shotgun, and he steps towards her, chest high and casual. Prowling, like a victorious predator come to finish the kill. He's smirking, and Malik strains against the arms that are holding her, pinning hers behind her. Twisting her shoulders, until he's a few inches away from her. He leans down, close enough that she can smell the rank stench of rakia on his breath. Her lip curls, but she refuses to shrink away. To let him think he has her scared. Sometimes, that's the proper strategy – let them think she was a harebrained, emotional, vulnerable woman, and use the underestimation to get the upper hand. With men like this, however, she had to give as good as she got if she ever wanted their respect. Not that she wanted his – as soon as she was out of this she'd wipe them out.

"You don't seem to have too many augs on you," he starts, and she realizes that the long up-and-down he'd given her earlier must have been an attempt to see just how much of an aug she was. She starts to think that perhaps these weren't the regular band of criminals and smugglers she worked with, but something worse.

Harvesters.

"What kind of leader sends a woman to make his deals and doesn't even upgrade her?" He drags the shotgun - which had been pointed at the ground - up, and presses the muzzle against her left thigh. She bites back a tight swallow; her flight suit may be mostly bulletproof, but even it couldn't withstand a blast from a shotgun at point-blank. The only thing that would was police armor or a black market TITAN aug, and she had neither. Couldn't fly in the former and didn't want to install the latter, undeveloped augmentations into herself.

"I don't need to be more metal than flesh to be useful," she bites back. The adrenaline making her stupid.

"Ah, there it is. I wondered if the Phoenix took just anyone in or if they needed the fire to match the wings." He's looking at the patches on her suit, the burning phoenix wings. She realizes he doesn't know that she is the Phoenix. Poor advertising on her part. Perhaps he'd have realized what a mistake this was if he'd known. What this miscalculation would cost him.

"Pity I'm going to extinguish it." He doesn't look saddened by this at all. A feral grin splits his lips, and she tries one last time to throw off the two men holding her still. "Tell your boss to come himself next time. If you get that far."

He pulls the trigger.

The sound is deafening. She chokes on her breath as all of her senses light up – and her vision blackens to compensate. The arms restraining her suddenly are holding her up as her leg- her leg buckles. She realizes the sound she'd heard after the gunshot, a wet thud-

There's agony lancing through her, and she lets out a shuddering moan, breath catching in her throat. She can't inhale- can't hear what anyone's saying, blood rushing through her ears. The pounding overwhelming. She tastes blood. Coppery and sharp, and she tries to pull herself together. Wrenching her eyes open. She wishes she hadn't.

The thud had been her leg. It's lying on the ground. On the ground. Not attached to her.

"Looks like this bird's had its wing clipped." He smirks, smug, and she wants to retch. She's focusing too hard on breathing in, out, as she almost feels the drops of blood splashing against the concrete. Like she can feel herself draining.

"Get her back to her plane. She won't survive the flight back to her boss. Should last just long enough to pass on the message." He's tossing the shotgun to a man, having no need for a weapon any longer. She wasn't a threat. Not like that. "Clean this up." He looks at the limb lying before him. The flightsuit had torn ragged and there was a nice glimpse of bone through all the shredded meat. Blood spills from it and from her, pooling garnet red and glinting in the low light on the concrete. Such a satisfying sight, he thinks. The splatter as she's moved a trophy, a sign of his victory. Pity she didn't have more parts he could take. Could sell. What would it do to the Phoenix, to see his own crew's parts on the market?

Malik feels the arms on her move, shifting to lift her instead of hold her. Feels her leg dragging along the ground as they pull her back to her plane. Thinks she feels both legs dragging. That can't be right.

She's suddenly out of the wind, and realizes they'd put her in the VTOL. They dump her unceremoniously into the pilot's chair, and she's grateful for that at least. They leave – her radar is almost covered in warnings but she sees no bodies in the ship and, by rote, turns the switches on, closing the door. Hands flitting across controls they don't need to see to know. Don't even need to feel. Which is good, considering how distant she feels. If she couldn't see her hands on the controls, she wouldn't be sure they were doing what she wanted them to.

Her HUD is flooded. Critical limb loss. No shit. Warning: Dangerous blood loss. Medical attention required immediately. She didn't have access to that. As the engines warm up, blasting idle heat to keep them away from her, she bends over to dig out the first aid kit. Immediately regrets it, as the movement rips a new agony through her. She sobs this time, not quite out of hostile territory, but safe enough.

Malik grabs the ribbon in the kit and slides the loop around her leg. Her stump of a leg. Oh god. She lost her leg. She wouldn't be able to fly-

Stops herself. She was a smuggler for aug mechanics. She could get an aug. She just had to live long enough to get back to safety.

Step one, put the tourniquet on. Once it's around the wound she pulls the strap as far as it goes. Secures it and inhales deep. Exhales. Once more. She grabs the rod and starts to twist it, moans as the pressure increases sharply on her leg. Keeps twisting, trying to inhale. One more round, exhale. The bleeding slows. Eventually, it stops.

She clicks the rod into place and lets out a shuddery sob. Hands soaked bloody, and she tries to wipe them off on her flight suit. She won't be needing it anymore after this. Her hands shake. Her normally sure, steady, calm hands shake.That's enough to distract her, draw her out of the steps she'd planned out. Watches them tremble against the dashboard, against the controls of a vehicle she knows better than anyone else. Wonders whose hands they are. Had she lost them too? Were they also lying out on a cold helipad, abandoned and mercy to Harvesters? Would she have to get those augged too? Could she even fly with augmented hands? Could they feel like her calloused pilot's hands could? Learn controls on their own, with no input required from her own consciousness?

Malik focuses back on the controls with a snap. Willfully does her best to ignore the fire in her leg. The tremble in her hands. Starts for takeoff and feels the lurch of her VTOL as it takes off. The men had pulled back. Had left. Were they going to follow her, try to find her home? They didn't seem to think she'd survive taking off.

Two calls ring through, and her HUD is so covered in warnings that she doesn't know who is calling. Picks up both of them on accident, hands gripping her controls hard enough that they would have snapped if her arms were augmented.

"Malik?!-"

"Mal-"

She stares ahead. Tries to sift through the warnings in her optics, can't push them to dismiss themselves – critical bloodloss impending – presumably because they were convinced she was dying.

"Yeah?" Tries her best to keep her voice even. Measured. It cracks on the lifted questioning tone, an edge of pain slipping through. She might be going into shock – if not for the fact that she has to focus on flying. Has to fly herself home. Or, to some form of safety anyway. One of her mechanics. The pain has shifted from her thigh to just above, the pressure of the tourniquet digging into her leg and everything below blissfully numb.

"Where are you?" That's Koller, she realizes. She's reached flight altitude, changing modes and waiting the two moments it takes her engines to shift position before pushing them at full throttle towards Prague.

"Bulgaria," she answers, voice tight. Pinpoint focus starting to lose grip. She needs a goal, step one, then another. One motion and then the next. If she has something to look to, it will keep her awake.

"Malik, your vitals spiked and then-" was that Pritchard? And was he spying on her vitals? When did he do that?

She just manages a laugh. "I'm-" not fine. Nothing close to fine. "Koller, you got any spare legs lying around?" Reaches, belatedly, to pull her harness straps on. Thinks she might pass out and fall out of her seat if she doesn't.

"Legs? Malik what-" the kid's voice pitches shrill and panicked.

"Just the left one," she amends. Glances down at the ruined mess. Pulls her gaze back to the sky, before the glistening blood makes her fixate on it, makes her lose focus on the mission. Fly home. Fly to Koller.

"Did you lose your leg?" Pritchard putting the pieces together. Although, they can't be that difficult to piece together. She should expect more of him. Should expect him to be faster. Smarter. Then again, she hadn't been all that smart either, had she? Trusted fucking harvesters to uphold a deal. Thought she could even make a deal with them. Stupid. Should have known the moment he hadn't been alone that the deal was scrubbed. That she should have never stepped out of her VTOL and sworn to dismantle them from far away. Too late for that now. Had to look forward. Step one, Koller. Step two…what was step two?

She hums, remembers she'd been asked a question. "The smugglers were not…smugglers," she explains. "Harvesters." She got off lucky, honestly. Harvesters were known for so much worse. They could have tied her down and pulled her neural augs out by force, turning to sell them on the black market.

"-Malik!" She realizes she's drifted when the name snaps her back. That they'd been talking to her. She's zoning out faster than she can zone back in.

"hm?" she realizes her vision is growing fuzzy. Adrenaline stretched thin and she just wants to sleep. She jabs an elbow into her leg, groans at the sudden spike of pain. It works though, wakes her up.

"How long?" Koller's asking her.

"To?" is he asking how long it would take her to fly there? Or how long she has until she passes out from blood loss? One of those might be sooner than the other.

"Until you get here, Mal." He sounds exasperated. Or worried. She can't quite tell. Maybe both? Probably both, knowing him.

"Forty minutes?" a hopeful estimate. If she can manage to make it that far.

"Mal, can I have your position?" Pritchard asks.

She pauses at the question. "Aren't you already in my system?" he'd gotten her vitals somehow, after all.

"Yes. I figured you'd appreciate me asking permission." His voice is carefully dry. No irritation. She thinks he might be trying to tamp down any emotion he's feeling. Or perhaps she's misread, and he really is nothing but inconvenienced by this. That he only worked for her because he lived for the hacking challenges she gave him whenever she made a new enemy.

She's taken too long to respond again. "Sure," she manages once she regains her focus. Thinks that whatever answer she gave wouldn't matter, and he'd be reading the data anyway. Her leg is pulsing where the tourniquet sits, the pain of blood trying to reach the rest of her leg. The leg that her body still thinks is there. The longer the tourniquet is on, the more painful it gets, but she can't afford to take it off.

"Are they following you?" Koller asks, panicked. She faintly hears rummaging in the background. He's probably trying to keep himself busy so he doesn't go out of his mind with worry. He probably will anyway.

"Don't think so." She's finding it harder and harder to stay focused for any stretch of time. Malik wonders if she has any combat alertness pills in her first aid kid. Takes a hand off the controls for a moment to check, dismayed when all she sees is painkillers. The amount of painkillers it would take to actually stop the lancing agony through her would be enough to knock her out. She wouldn't be able to fly straight even if she wasn't lacking a significant amount of blood and body mass. Wonders, for a moment, if she won't be able to handle alcohol as well when she has a new leg. Follows that train for a breath – she'd have less blood, certainly. Less blood meant less fluids for alcohol to diffuse into, so she'd certainly be facing an impairment there. Her ability to outdrink other smugglers was one of her repertoire of skills when it came to setting up deals.

Thankfully she knows her plane's controls inside and out, doesn't need to see them to know where they are as her mind follows threads at random, wandering instead of holding still. Doesn't need to be focused here to fly. To know the feel of buttons and slide controls under her hands, the contours of the joysticks. Texture is blurred from her shaking hands and her sight isn't the best at the moment, hazy and muted. Everything feels like she's experiencing it from a distance, through a layer of muffled cotton. Except the pain. That spikes straight into her core, a sharp fire that makes her breath stutter with each flare.

It sparks a fury that she's surprised to find wakes her up again. She has a new step two. Call Jensen. She mutes her calls with Vaclav and Pritchard – knows that if she hung up on them they'd immediately panic and think she'd died.

"Jensen." Immediately, as soon as the line is open. Trying to keep her voice even. Failing.

"Malik?" Is that a shift in tone she hears? Or is she hallucinating? Probably the latter, but he sounds surprised.

"'ve got a job for you." The fury dark in her voice, something to focus on. Thank fuck.

He doesn't protest. She wonders if he knows it's not another bodyguard request. She doesn't ask for anything twice.

"Kill those Harvester fuckers who took my leg." A heavy exhale as she watches a police patrol fly past her, a small blessing.

"What." She can't understand the emotion there, the blood rushing in her ears and the pain flaring high.

"You heard me."

"Are you bleeding now?" He sounds vaguely alarmed. Can he feel alarm? She's never seen him anything but stoic and calm.

"Jensen. I'll pay whatever you want." Her hands shaking in their tight clutch of the controls.

"Your life." He finally answers.

This startles her into silence for a moment. Not sure she understands. "What?"

"Get yourself home," can he hear her VTOL engines? How does he know where she is? "And live through this, and we'll call it even."

She sits in silence. That can't be right. Did she ever even connect with him? Maybe she's already dead, or passed out, conjuring whatever might comfort her.

"Any requests?" She thinks she hears a shotgun pump. The sound makes her flinch.

"My leg. Bald fucker, their boss, has it," she can't, can't have anyone else keeping a part of her. Not like that.

"Stay alive for me, and I'll bring it to you." He sounds calm. Calm. She wishes she could feel calm.

"Sure, whatever you like." She doesn't want to tell him the truth, that she might well crash her plane before she ever gets close to home.

"I mean it, Malik."

"Faridah." She answers. If she's going to die anyway, what does it matter if he knows her name?

"Adam," he answers. Quiet. Maybe he thinks she'll die, too.

"Thanks, Adam."

He hangs up.

She unmutes the other two calls, and realizes they've been trying to get her attention.

"'m here, 'm here." Reassuring. Sort of. It's no secret she's close to delirious and a wonder she's flying remotely straight at all.

"How much longer, Mal?" Vaclav, his voice high and sharp.

"Fifteen." A tight swallow. She's almost there. Just a little further. She can do this.

"Hang in there for me. I'll be outside when you get here. Please, Mal."

"Don't worry 'bout me, kid," a huff of breath, startling as the blood-soaked controller slips in her grip. "I'll make it."

She does. Somehow, she does. Sees the lights of Prague and aims instinctively for the courtyard Vaclav lives in. She can fit a VTOL in it on a good day, but she doesn't have the ability to walk from a helipad, and the bookstore's roof can't hold a plane. It would collapse, instantly. So she'll land in the courtyard. It'll be fine.

She only broke one tree with her wing, so she chalks that up to a win. Turning off the engines and popping the cockpit open. Undoing her harness and, by instinct, standing up.

Which, bad idea.

Missing leg, and all.

Her right leg buckles tips her forward and out of the VTOL. Something yelps – oh, that's Vaclav in front of her. He catches her, his chest warm despite the cool alloy of his hands, and that's. All the fighting she can do.

Malik closes her eyes.