Ahhh. The main plot begins.


"Helgi. Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," I murmured into my earpiece. Since our plot was public, we had ditched the radios for something more discreet.

"You're clear to enter the building. Don't draw attention to yourself. Good luck," Rin explained through the mic.

I took a deep breath and pushed in the glass doors to enemy territory.

We were in the heart of Beijing. Bruno's building wasn't the tallest in the city, but it definitely wasn't the smallest either. Swarms of people crowded the streets and the building. Most, in this part of town, were dressed in business wear. I had never expected to hear so many people speaking English in China. Still, I heard my fair share of unintelligible conversations.

The lobby of the building was modern and large. There were the front desks, behind which sat two blank-faced clerks. Confidence can get you anywhere, Yuma had reminded me before we left.

Keeping my chin high, I walked right past the desk. Neither of them paid any attention to me.

Somehow, I had ended up alone for this part of the mission. Yuma was flying over the city with Anon and Kanon in the helicopter, ready for our pick-up once the job was done. Rin was in one of the taller buildings nearby scoping out the scene, and Flower was at home. As she promised, she was nowhere near the scene of the crime.

They had shown me a map of the building but it wasn't much help. Now, in person, I had to turn myself around once or twice before I finally found the stairs to the basement.

"Yeah. The windows are angled horribly for a shot out here," Rin said. "I'll meet you in five minutes. Did you find them?"

"No," I said, checking the hall to make sure I was empty. "But I'm pretty sure I'm close." As I walked by, I pushed every door open. I was in the maintenance hall. If anyone finds you, use the age-old excuse. "I was looking for the bathroom." No one had found me yet. But the further down the hall I walked, the harder my heart was beginning to beat.

"Find them. I'm on my way. Sol, is it clear?"

"Yeah," Kanon answered. "No one on your tail. You should be okay."

I pushed open a final door and grinned. "Found it," I said softly, stepping inside and closing the door behind me. I had never been so relieved to hide in a janitor's closet.

"Start changing. I'm coming," Rin told me.

Along the walls of the room were lockers. Some were closed, but most were open. Hanging inside of them were navy blue pants and a button up shirt. I grabbed a pair I thought would fit me and began fitting them over my clothes.

I was freaking out, sure, but the intensity of the situation hadn't hit me yet. Getting caught in a plot like this was life in prison. Or worse, if they found out who I was associated with. Not to mention the fact that this guy had guards outside of his office on the top floor. Yes. Guards. Big, buff security guys with dark sunglasses and permanent frowns. I was not looking forward to getting past them. Rin had said there was only one way. Fighting. The janitor outfits would get up that far, but nothing but brute force would get past them.

As I slipped my arm into one of the sleeves, I froze. There were footsteps in the hallway. The door was closed, and I tiptoed quickly over to lock it and then halted once more in fear of being caught. The footsteps echoed down the hallway, coming from upstairs just as I had. They walked slowly and calmly past the door, and, to my relief, didn't bother me. I continued listening, waiting for them to leave. They entered the door at the end of the hallway. The boiler room.

"Guys," I whispered into my earpiece. "There's someone down here."

"Avoid them," Anon told me.

"Nah. Tell them you got lost going to the-"

"Shut it, Loki," Rin scoffed. "Almost to the bottom floor. I'll be crossing the street in thirty seconds. Let me know when they leave."

I nodded. Then, realizing that they couldn't see me, "Okay." Much quieter now, I continued putting my outfit on. Once I had looped my belt on, I jumped at the sound of the boiler room door being thrown open. It struck the wall with a deafening sound, and the footsteps had turned into a full out sprint down the hall. My heart nearly stopped.

What are they-

"Helgi." Rin sounded through my ear again. "Update."

"They're… they're gone. But-"

"On my way."

After hiding the contents of my bag on the cleaning cart, I cautiously opened the door, looking from side to side down the hall. There was no sign of life, but the door to the boiler room stood ajar. Beyond the door, the lights were off. I could hear the hum of the machines in the room. They were loud. Just like the generator at home. The open door looked almost menacing, like an open jaw calling me inside. We had been on the mission for only a few minutes.

But something felt really wrong.

Taking one last glance down the hall, I left the cart in the door to the lockers and jogged down to the boiler room.

The lights were off, but from the light in the hallway, I could see shadows of massive machines towering above me. The room was almost as big as the lobby, with dirty concrete floors and plain white walls. Steel beams thicker than the hundred-year-old trees that stood around our base lined the corners of the room. With the lights off, I narrowed my eyes at a dim red glow set on them.

I stepped into the room. It was hot.

"Entering the lobby," Rin updated.

The closer I stepped, the more suspicious I became. The red glow was a small circle of light, slowly fading in and out as it flashed periodically. As I walked closer, I caught sight of black straps holding the contraption in place.

A temperature gauge? I guessed. Would make sense. Wouldn't want this place overheating. The explosion would-

My mouth dropped open. The red light wasn't a circle at all. It was a screen. With a timer. Strapped to the skeleton of the entire building.

They had sprinted out of the room-

There was a screen on it. 29:02. 29:01. 29:00. 28:59.

"Guys," I said, staring at the bomb and my blood run cold.

"What's up?" Kanon answered.

"We need to get out of here. Now."

Rin sighed. "This isn't the time for you to get cold feet-"

"There are bombs in the boiler room."

Silence.

"What was that, Helgi?" Anon asked.

"Bombs. In. The. Boiler. Room."

More silence.

"I'm coming," Rin finally said, her breathing uneven.

"We need to leave-"

"Sorry, Helgi. But I really don't believe you. It's probably something to keep the place for overheating. I'll take a look," she said casually.

"That's what I thought, but-"

An opening door echoed through the hallway, followed by soft footsteps on the stairs. For a terrifying moment, I thought I had been caught. With bombs.

"In the hallway." Her voice echoed through my ear, and behind me.

I turned, sprinting out of the room, and looked at her frantically. In her sleek back uniform, she wore her usual calm and collected demeanor. "Let me see," she said, rolling her eyes at me and pushing into the boiler room. I pointed to the wall. She walked over to it.

This whole building. I thought with growing horror. This building we were standing in right then. All the people up top. All the clerks, the businesspeople, the guards, the target-

"Update, Kára?" Yuma asked. His voice was tense.

Rin paused in the room behind me, then turned, her walking doubling in speed. "Get your shit off the cart," she told me tensely as she pushed past me. "Loki. We need pickup. Now."

"You're fucking kidding," Kanon said.

"No. I'm not. He's right. We have half an hour to get the fuck out of this city before this entire building is grounded."

Voices erupted into my earpiece.

"Who did this?"

"Did the client set us up?"

"What the fuck-"

"What about the client?"

I frantically shoved all of my belongings into my bag and threw it over my shoulder. Rin didn't even bother putting on a janitor's outfit. I would have been embarrassed at my clothes had my life, and the lives of the hundreds of people in this building, not been in danger.

Rin had reached the bottom of the stairs. I ran after her. My hands clutched at my bag. I was trembling in my shoes.

"Loki. Extraction. Where is the closest place you can pick us up?" She asked. Her voice never betrayed her calm mood. But her movements were robotic and unpredictable. She was scared, too.

"P-probably at the top of Bruno's building. Can you get there in time?"

"We'll have to." Rin led the way to the first floor. We skirted the lobby. My mind was racing, looking over the people working, smiling, talking in the lobby. The people who had no idea that-

"Keep moving," Rin called over to me. She seemed to have abandoned all hope of being discreet, instead frantically trying to get us out of here.

"Who the fuck did this?" Kanon nearly screamed into her earpiece. "There is no way this is a coincidence. They know we're here."

"You don't think it's Meiko, do you?"

"No," Rin said as we walked up the stairs to the second floor. "We've never betrayed her, we've made her millions, and she's not stupid enough to throw an entire building full of people into the mix. It can't be her."

"This is gonna be all over the news," Anon pointed out, worried. "There's gonna be an investigation. The cameras are out, right? Right?!"

"Yes!" Her sister answered. "They're out. But eyewitnesses may still take note of you guys. Be careful."

"They don't know our names," Rin said. We crossed the floor briskly. It was an office floor. There were cubicles full of people staring intently at their computers. A few people glanced up at us but didn't look again. With every face, I felt like a bullet was shooting through me.

"You guys can hit the client on the way-" Kanon suggested. Like the rest of us, she was desperate for our money.

"No time," Rin said, casting accusatory glances around the room. "The… It'll take care of him. We need to get out of here, now."

Each person had their workspace decorated with everything from stickers to bobbleheads. Almost everyone had a picture frame sitting before them. Parents, grandparents, friends, wives, husbands. Kids. Oh God. I resisted the urge to lean against the wall and puke. I felt sick.

Rin didn't notice. Still ahead of me, she pushed open a heavy steel door. In front of us was a winding staircase. She began jogging up them.

I wanted to ask about the elevator, but if I opened my mouth, I knew I was going to puke. So I kept it shut.

What I should have asked about was the number of floors in this building. Every two flights of stairs there was a number hanging on the wall both in Chinese characters and English numbers. At floor twenty-two, I was beginning to get worried.

Has it been half an hour yet? I asked, almost expecting the floor to explode straight under my feet. I checked my watch. It had been three minutes. Three minutes that felt like three years. I could picture exactly how it would happen. Those on the lower floors might make it out in time. But the upper floors… they would hear a giant boom from the lobby, maybe feel the building shake a bit as the very structure of it was destroyed in a single second. There would be fires. The sprinkler system would go off. And then the building would lose balance. Not only would the people working here be affected, but whoever it fell onto-

I closed my eyes, feeling tears brimming in them. My legs were aching. I felt like I could already smell the smoke.

I slipped on a stair and landed on the ground with a grunt.

Rin stopped. "Helgi, come on!" She continued to use my code name while her earpiece was broadcasting. She retreated the last few stairs, crouching next to me and pulling up my arm. "We need to go!" She wailed.

"All these people," I said softly.

"Let's go."

I let her pull me to my feet, and we resumed climbing.

There wasn't another soul in the staircase. Everyone else had, smartly, opted to take the elevator. I was a mess of sweat by the thirtieth floor, my bag painfully dragging at my shoulder and my feet growing heavier with each step.
"How… many… more…" Despair, sickness, and exhaustion welled in me. I had never, in my entire life, felt that consumed by the stress of the situation. Most of the soon-to-be-lost lives were below us, now.

Rin wasn't doing too good, either. "There are forty-four floors," she said in a single breath. Her lead on me was diminishing. Fatigue weighed in her as well. "How long… how long has it been?"

I looked at my watch again, keeping one hand on the railing for balance. "Seven minutes." I'd been sprinting up the stairs for seven minutes. The timer had twenty-three minutes left. Hundreds of people would die in twenty-three minutes.

"We're on the building," Yuma stated. "Where the hell are you guys?"

"Almost… there," Rin choked out. The thirty-sixth floor passed us. The thirty-seventh. The thirty-eight.

Fuck, I thought. The guards. I had completely forgotten about them.

"K…" I gasped, barely remembering to call Rin by her codename. "The guards-"

"Fuck," she cursed. Fortieth. Forty-first, forty second…

Finally, after an eternity, we burst from the door. The hallway in front of us was completely plain, except for a single door leading to our target's office. Outside stood security, exactly as I had pictured them. Both pairs of eyes were trained on us. Across the hall was the final door to the roof. We just had to get past them.

"Hey! What are you two-"

Rin didn't waste any time, pulling her baton out of her bag, and dashing at the two of them. The fleeting thought came to me that I had never fought anyone other than her and the other's before, and this was for real. I pulled out my baton, whipping it open, and followed after her.

Their first instinct was to pull out their handguns, which we immediately knocked out of their hands by Rin's lightning-quick movements. She whipped one of the men in the wrist, sending the weapon flying down the hallway, and then did the same with the other. I joined in the fight just after that.

The janitor clothes and the duffle bag through off my balance greatly. Rin fought one, while the other turned to me. I swung for him without hesitation.

I landed one good strike on the side of the head, earning a curse from him as he reached to grab my weapon. Jumping away, I whapped another hit on his side, where he howled in pain once more and kneeled into the wall. With a quick leap, I tried to dodge past him, while also avoiding Rin's opponent who was throwing punches in her direction, but I was too slow. My exhaustion from the stairs had caused me to lose my skill. He was able to grab the baton, snapping it in half as I tried to pull away from him.

I found myself on the opposite side of the guards with the stairs behind me. While my foe stood from the ground, Rin's caught her. She breathed in quickly as the man grabbed the collar of her shirt, lifting her off the ground and throwing her into the wall. I watched helplessly as her expression contorted into pain. She hit the wall with a sickening pop. The guard held her there.

"Fuck!" She screamed. Her left shoulder was normal, but her right stuck out at an odd angle. Her right arm hung limply beside her. He had dislocated it.

There is a bomb below me right now. I picked up on of the discarded pistols and took aim at his head.

I pulled the trigger without even thinking.

The bullet went in one ear and out the other, and the man dropped Rin, falling to the side.

"What-" the other guard began, but he didn't get the chance to finish before I shot him, too.

Rin sat on the ground, her eyes clenched shut, her body quaking, and sweat dripping from her brow. "Fuck," she muttered again. "Fuck."

Staring at the guards next to her, I threw the pistol on the ground as if it burned my hand. "Come on," I said.

"What's happening?" Anon yelled. "Are you guys okay?"

Neither of us answered. Instead, I grabbed Rin's good arm, helping her rise from the floor, and we crossed the hall to the stairs.

We burst out onto the roof seconds later. Sure enough, the helicopter was parked on the helipad. Yuma was in the front seat. Anon and Kanon stood at the door, their gazes snapping to us.

We limped across the helipad, Rin leaning heavily on me. The girls helped her into the vehicle. I gently removed her bag from her shoulder and threw both of our duffles in before jumping in myself.

Rin collapsed into a chair, her eyes closing. Anon sat next to her.

"We in!?" Yuma called, his voice barely audible through the spinning blades.

"Yes!" Kanon screamed.

"Let me look at your arm-"

"No!" Rin wailed. "Do not fucking touch me."

Anon didn't take Rin's harsh words personally. Her voice remained gentle. "We need to pop it back in-"

"I will throw myself out of this helicopter before I let anyone fucking touch my arm!" She screamed in response.
Anon took a seat. She didn't try again.

I sat fearlessly next to the open doors as the building disappeared from below us. Yuma only pulled us a couple of feet off of the building before veering to the right, taking us north.

All those people, I thought. I'm personally responsible for two.

I expected to feel sick again. Surprisingly, I didn't. Not for the guards, no. But for the civilians. My grief was almost overshadowed by my relief that Rin and I had escaped. Almost.

As Yuma slowly pulled us away from the live building, I caught a glimpse into the CEO's office.

"Yuma!" I called, not really knowing what I was doing. "Stop!"

"What? Why?"

"Turn us to the left a little bit!" I reached for Rin's bag.

"What are you-"

"Just do it!"

Rin was either unconscious or deafened with pain. Anon and Kanon watched from their seats as I pulled out the parts to the rifle. The wind from the blades ruffled my hair wildly.

"What are you doing?" Kanon yelled.

"I'm taking the shot!"

"What?!" Both sisters yelled in unison.

"You have to trust me!"

Kanon looked appalled. "No! There's no way you can make that shot! The last thing we need is another alerted target-"

"Kanon," Anon said thoughtfully. "If he misses, the bombs will just take him out."

She looked wildly between her sister and I. "But… but-"

I was already assembling Rin's gun.

I had seen her do it many times, and Flower had taught me to put together similar rifles before, but the pressure of the situation left my hands trembling. Not to mention I was kneeling on the floor of a helicopter, next to an opened door that led to a very long drop to certain death. I had to rub the sweat from my hands on my shirt several times to ensure I wouldn't drop any key parts.

The sisters watched silently as I worked. Even Rin's eyes had opened just a bit, looking down at me from where she was strapped in safely. I couldn't look at her long without my stomach lurching at the unnatural sight of her shoulder.

Before even I knew it, the gun was in my hands, ready to go.

No pressure or anything, I thought to myself as I rolled onto my stomach. The opened bag sat next to me. I pulled a single bullet out of it.

Inserting it into the chamber, I pulled the bolt back and peered through the scope.

It took a second of searching, but I found the office. Bruno was the only one in his office. His back was to the window as he shuffled through an endless pile of papers on his desk.

I tried desperately to aim the perfect shot at his head, but the helicopter swung wildly, often throwing my shot off. "Can you keep this thing still?" I yelled.

"Oh, gee, I'll fucking try! You wanna drive?" Was Yuma's only response.

We were all a little stressed out.

I can't aim with this movement, I realized hopelessly. I'll just have to time it perfectly.

Through the scope, the helicopter caused my vision to waver in a predictable manner. I held the gun steady. The crosshairs passed over his head once, then twice, then three times, then four-

On the fifth, I pulled the trigger.

For an unending second, nothing happened. And then, peering through the scope, my mouth dropped open as blood appeared on the desk, and his figure fell limp after it.

"Holy shit," Kanon said. I jumped at the sound of her voice. She had left her seat and was standing over me, binoculars in her hand. "You fucking did it. You fucking did it."

"He hit it?!" Anon's voice grew excited.

"Yuma, get us out of here!" Kanon yelled. She looked down at me. "You fucking did it," she repeated, disbelief in her eyes. "How-"

"Flower is gonna be so proud," Anon laughed, suddenly giddy with excitement.

"You were born to do this shit!" Yuma laughed from the driver's seat.

But my job wasn't done yet. Setting the gun down on the bag and pushing it to the back of the helicopter so it wouldn't fall out, I searched frantically through my bag until I found what I was looking for. I tore open the plastic baggie and yanked the flip phone out of it.

"What are you-"

"What's the Chinese number for 911?" I asked.

They stared at me blankly.

"What the fuck is it?!" I was still filled with tension.

Our earpieces were off. "Len, we don't want to-"

"It's 110 for the police," Yuma called from the driver's seat.

I punched the number in and rose the phone to my ear.

A male voice answered in Chinese. I didn't understand a word they were saying, but before they could even finish, I cut them off with the address of the building. It had been ingrained in my mind before we even left Montana. "There are bombs in the boiler room in the basement," I said, trying to keep my voice slow for understanding. "Active bombs in the basement! They should have about twenty minutes until they go off. Please, please hurry."

The voice began to say something, in English, I realized hopefully, but I ended the call, closing the phone, and throwing it out of the open door.

The five of us sat in silence as the helicopter flew further and further away from the city.

My blood was still pumping in my ears half an hour after we took flight. My ears were ready for the smallest boom in the distance, but none came. We were probably too far away, anyway. I still hadn't bothered moving to the safety of a seat. I sat in front of the door with my legs crossed, staring intently at the passing scenery. For a long time, the only sound was the rhythmic beat of the helicopter blades and Rin's heavy breathing. She was still clutching her arm painfully.

"We lived," Anon suddenly said. "And we eliminated the target."

"Mission complete," Kanon said softly next to her.

Yuma looked over his shoulder at me. "I didn't know assassins were supposed to save lives, Len!" He said with a smile.

"Do you think they got to them in time?" I asked, my elbows resting on my knees and my hands joined in front of my face. We had reached the countryside. Endless hills of green expanded underneath us.

No one answered.

"Let's just get home," Yuma said. "I'm sure Flower has already heard about the entire thing."

"I just… I couldn't let them all die-"

"Len," Anon silenced me. "No one is giving you shit. You did the right thing."

I killed three and hopefully saved many more.

Rin wore a small smile in the seat next to me.


Len is too good of a person to kill people. What a babe.

Thanks for reading guys :)