In an instant my blade was at her neck- or, where her neck had been. Because now she was a foot away, and she had pulled the weird chopstick things out of her hair- which was now flowing beautifully. "Let's move somewhere more private, eh?" I nodded to the alleyway, and we slowly moved into it. I had meant to kill her on the sidewalk and then "walk" her body to the alley, but this was even better.

"Thomas, you fool," she whispered. "I thought you were cute." Of course she had. It was my job to look cute.

"Renee, dearest, I'm not enjoying this, so just let me kill you and leave. It's much better than you trying to fight me with chopsticks." The sticks presently made a hissing sound, and razor sharp but flimsy blades came out of the tips. Oh. "Um. Still, I will kill you." And, on that graceful note, I charged at her, grasping her left wrist with my right hand and blocking her right knife with my blade's wristguard. I twisted her left hand until she dropped the blade with a screech, and then used my now-free hand to snap her left wrist. Quick and clean, it left her weaponless. As far as I knew.

So, when she pulled out the silenced pistol with her unbroken hand and took a step back, I was surprised. Not as surprised as she was, though, when I spun and kicked the gun away with my right foot, using my momentum to carry myself into another spin, at the end of which I leaped on her and plunged the blade into her throat. Ouch.

Then there was the Blue Room, as I had come to call it. The short "redemption" period where you pace around and wait for the victim to die. Which isn't always a quick occurrence.

So, I paced back and forth in front of her body and spoke. "This, Renee darling, is when you confess your sins." She said nothing, but simply laughed. I crouched down near her head and whispered in her ear. "If you don't confess to something, I may lose my job."

"Fine, then," she replied. "I confess to the murder of one Thomas Cale." Er. What? Really though, what?

"Excuse me, miss, I think you're confused. You see, I've killed you, not vice-versa. How much wine did you have?" I waited for her response with bated breath.

Thomas, if you hadn't been so stricken by my beauty, you may have noticed my necklace, and not just what it lies between." Oi! That hurt.

"Wait-a-minute, the necklace! The damned necklace that that man was wearing! It matches yours- back-up, I presume? And your hand- you twitched your hand on the way out! But that must have been an all-clear- that was the all-clear, wasn't it?" My mind was racing, and I was talking a mile-a-minute.

"Templars are smarter than you Assassins. That was the 'come out and check in two minutes' signal, because if things went sour, and you were an Assassin, I'd have to kill you." Wait a second. She was on a mission, too? "Uh, Renee... you were on a mission, too? Does this mean that the Templars know about me?" Oh shit. My blood went cold- if they knew I was an Assassin- but wait. My name. They didn't know that my real name wasn't Thomas, they couldn't know or she wouldn't still be calling me by it.

She didn't answer, so I grabbed her by the hair and repeated my question. "Do. The. Templars. Know. About. Me. Yes or no, Renee?" I saw it in her eyes, then; fear. It always came down to fear with me. As soon as I made that realization, my heart turned stony. Here was this woman, this woman I had begun to fall for, dying on the floor in front of me, and all I was doing was scaring her. Well, shit. It always seemed to turn out this way.

"N-no! No, Thomas! It's just procedure- just in case!" Wow. So Templars really don't have personal lives. Huh. I let go of her head and it hit the floor- if it was a floor- with a thud. Damn. I should be nicer. I stood back up and resumed pacing. "T-Thomas?"

I stopped, and my voiced softened. "What, Renee?"

"Am... am I really dying?" With that, her voice gave out, and her head lolled to the side. I sighed, taking the "feather" from my coat pocket and using it to collect a blood sample- and the metal device, which was shaped like a feather, sent it to the NSA. That was done. The Blue Room fell away, and I was back in the dark alley. But not for long.

I looked around at the walls, not bothering to hide the body. The Templars wouldn't want to make a big deal of this; it always happened like this. If an Assassin was killed, we found out who had done it on our own and killed him. And his family. And his friends. If a Templar was killed, they tried to find out who did it, but rarely did so. One wall had a pipe leading up to the roof, and the other had a Dumpster pressed against it with a few rugged bricks that might provide fingerholds. Which to take? Shimmy up the pipe or scale the wall?

I jumped on top of the Dumpster and clambered lightly up the wall, taking to the rooftops until I got to the end of the shopping center. Then I slid down the wall to the floor, walking back around to the restaurant. By this time, the man had come and gone, leaving the body for the police to find. I slipped into my car and drove off, stopping back at the motel long enough to check out and get my stuff. I wanted that goddamned expensive cologne- at least I'd get something out of this mission. I sighed as I drove away from the city, heading back to my very nice, very large house in Seattle. I didn't know, really, why there were so many windows in it. All you ever got to see was snow and rain, but I liked it that way. Here I was known as Jacob Smith- by the few people who knew me.

I walked through the door and was greeted by a note on my dining room table, which read: Good work, "Thomas". You've got money in the safe.

I opened the safe that I kept behind my couch and removed the stack of hundreds. A hitman, I thought grimly. I've become a hitman.