Alexia joined her new crewmates in the elevator, eagerly telling them all she knew about the Micro SMG the whole way down. Jess listened intently, nodding at some of the information, while Curtis seemed to be dozing off as she talked, stifling several yawns. Alexia herself didn't notice this – she was too focused on expressing the bank of information about this gun that her brain had stored over the years.

The three loaded themselves and their weapons into Jess's car, a hot pink Bravado Buffalo with a carbon wing spoiler a deafening exhaust. The ride wasn't that long – the Olympic Freeway was just around the corner from Alexia's apartment, but she took the time to talk about the Micro SMG's telescoping bolt, an ingenious design feature in her opinion.

"So you see, Shrewsbury didn't come up with this idea, but they did help popularize it," Alexia explained. "To make the gun as short as possible, they had the bolt wrap around the end of the barrel, rather than having the bolt sit completely behind it. The barrel's also positioned at the bottom, toward the trigger. Therefore, the bore axis is lower and it's a lot easier to control the gun at full auto. I mean, in a short weapon like that, those .45 rounds have a lot of recoil, so it's remarkable they made it as controllable as they did with that pistol grip. I know there are fancier and more lightweight guns out there nowadays, but there's certainly a bit of charm with that weapon. And that design inspired a lot of the SMG's we see out there today."

Alexia stopped; she blinked and came back to the present. Jess's car was parked on the curb under an overpass, which was filled with shadows despite the incredibly sunny day. To her left, she noticed a guard in a checkered shirt holding his own Micro SMG, standing next to the graffitied entrance to an alleyway.

"Erm…Sorry, did I go on too long?" Alexia looked down at her feet in shame.

"No, you're good!" Jess laughed. "You have the sweetest little voice, by the way. You should try to speak up more often, Alexia, I loved hearing you talk."

"I, uh…" Alexia's cheeks lit up, to further giggles from Jess. "I'm…not sure how to respond to that."

"No worries, girl - here, take this ammo and put it in your pocket."

Jess offered Alexia three twelve-round magazines of nine-millimeter ammo. Alexia took these mags, stuffing them in her front pocket next to her iFruit phone. Counting the one already loaded in her gun, she now had forty-eight rounds. Since Jess and Curtis would be taking the lead, she supposed this would be enough. All three occupants of the car also put on their skull masks, placing them atop their heads for the moment.

"You ready, baby?" Jess asked her boyfriend.

"This place?" Curtis looked intensely at the alleyway. "You're sure this is the place, Jess?"

"Mm-hmm." Jess nodded. "Olympic Freeway overpass, Power Street. Just like the boss told us."

"God, I can't believe I didn't recognize it from the street name…This is where I go to get my fix!" Curtis's eyes were fearful. "There's a dude here named Diego, he sells the finest drugs in the city. You know I can't lose him."

"Wear your mask then, baby." Jess shrugged. "He won't know it was you."

"He knows I'm in the Skulls," Curtis dismissed. "He'll see those masks and he won't let me within a hundred feet anymore. Sorry, but I can't lose this plug, babe. I'm out."

"Y…you're 'out'?" Jess's voice hardened.

"I was going here for crack long before I joined the Skulls. Look, babe, you know as well as I do that there's two things of a man's that you never mess with: his dignity, and his dealer. That's the code of the streets."

"Curtis, I can get you another dealer!" Jess shouted. "What about the job, huh? The boss is trusting us with his niece, and you're just gonna bail?" Jess slapped her hands down at her sides. "You know what he's gonna do, right? He's gonna call you a fucking traitor! And I think you know damn well what he does to traitors!"

Curtis sighed, his eyes heavy. Jess put a hand on his face and trailed it down, which immediately seemed to comfort him.

"Think about this, baby," she said softly. "It's not worth it, not for this one dealer. And hey, you help us out, and I'll make sure that sexy time tonight is something you'll never forget."

"You mean that, Jess?"

Jess nodded, taking his face in both of her hands and giving him a firm kiss. She pulled away, leaving him breathless. Alexia couldn't help but feel incredibly uneasy watching him, but she didn't know why this was.

"Okay," he said finally. "But would it be alright if I just bought one last hit from him? Like I said, Diego and his guys trust me, so after I go in and buy it, maybe I could come back and tell you guys how many dudes are in there, maybe even locate the stash we'll be stealing so we won't have to go in at all." He looked briefly at Alexia. "I mean, it's her first job, right? So it'd be best if we're smart about it."

"Oh, Curtis, you cracked-out genius!" Jess shouted, her hair spilling onto the driver's seat as she looked behind her. "What do you say to that, Alexia?"

"S-sure, I guess."

In that moment, Alexia chalked her uneasiness up to simple anxiety – after all, she'd never done anything like this before. However, she figured that trust in the two veteran crew members sitting in front of her was essential to completing the job.

"Alright then, I'll be back in a minute," Curtis said firmly as he exited the car. "Shut the engine off though, babe. This car's pretty loud, they'll hear you idling in there."

"Right on, baby." Jess smiled, taking her keys out of the ignition. "Be careful in there, okay?"

Curtis nodded half-heartedly and shut the passenger side door. His eyes were focused not on Jess, but on the guard across the street. Alexia watched as he crossed the road at a walk, which turned into a jog as he neared the man guarding the entrance.

The two girls watched as Curtis went up to the guard and started talking with him. Alexia couldn't tell what he was saying from across the street, but he was gesturing rather frantically, delivering wayward glances toward the car as the other man listened.

"W-what's he doing, Jess?"

"I dunno." Jess squinted. "He said he knows these guys, so he shouldn't have any trouble getting in…But if he can't, I guess we can shoot our-"

The guard shouted something to his friends in the alleyway before he and Curtis drew their weapons, aiming directly at the car.

"Oh shit, GET DOWN!"

Jess pushed Alexia's head into the seat as a hail of bullets pierced the car's windows, inviting echoing crack of gunfire into the cabin.

Fumbling for her gun, Jess kept her head down as she climbed over the center console. Bullets widened the holes in the drivers-side windows and sent tiny bits of glass showering down on her head.

"Alexia!" Jess shouted over the gunfire. "Alexia, follow my lead!"

Alexia's hands were clamped over her mouth – she was hyperventilating, her eyes wide and her face flushed red. She could feel the glass pieces raining down on the skull mask atop her head and the heat of the bullets as they crashed through the car, producing rushes of air inches above her head. The initial volley had missed her by inches, and if Jess hadn't acted so quickly, she knew she would be dead.

Jess reached over and shook her shoulders. "Alexia, I need you to stay with me! We're gonna get through this, I promise! Just climb over the seat and take cover behind the tires! They're bulletproof, so they should hold!"

Alexia met eyes with Jess, seeing the urgency in her crewmate's face. Her breaths slowed somewhat, although her heart was doing somersaults as the bullets thwacked against the steel doors to her left.

Jess patted Alexia's shoulder. "Come on, grab your gun! Let's go!"

Alexia nodded rapidly, grabbing her pistol from the seat next to her, then crawled after Jess, opening the rear passenger door and stumbling out onto the pavement. Automatic gunfire echoed through the underpass, each crack and thump much louder than anything she'd ever experienced. Her fingers trembled as she held the pistol – her reflection in the gun's barrel showed a face flushed, glass fragments glittering in her black hair and freshly-glossed lips trembling with fear.

"Come on out, you Skull motherfuckers!"

A man's voice sounded above the gunfire, followed by what sounded like a dozen more automatic weapons joining in the chorus. Alexia couldn't think – her ears were in physical pain, and she raised her hands to them to block out some of the thunderous gunfire. Jess raised her head out of cover, firing a three-round burst from her Micro SMG, but was quickly forced back down by the barrage of gunfire.

"Shit, there's a lot of them!" Jess's breath quickened as she looked at Alexia. "I have an idea, okay? Hold on!"

Jess reached back in the car and grabbed her purse, which was sitting in a bed of glass. She withdrew something from her bag, a small egg-shaped object made of a dull brown metal. Alexia immediately recognized the object and seized in panic.

"COVER YOUR EARS!" Jess ordered.

Alexia did so, and Jess pulled the firing pin on the grenade and lobbed it over the hood of the car. Through her hands, Alexia could hear the high-pitched thwack of the grenade on the asphalt, followed by the panicked shouts of men. Jess covered her ears as well moments before a pressure wave blasted through the overpass, shaking the ground beneath the girls' feet. Alexia stumbled, nearly falling over, feeling the heat of the grenade blast as it launched shrapnel over her head and into the concrete bridge above her.

Jess peeked her head up again and started shooting, delivering two more short bursts from her Micro SMG, using the scope to assist her aim.

"Alright, that cleared some of them out! Start shootin', Lexi!"

Bullets were still flying overhead, but not quite as many. Alexia's breath hitched as she peeked her head out for a microsecond, just enough to gain a glimpse of what she would be shooting at. The bodies of fallen gangsters littered the road, some already dead, some almost dead with limbs missing, victims of the pressure wave that Alexia had never seen up close, but had read about quite a bit. A lot of them were screaming and thrashing on the ground as they bled out, but their friends in the alleyway could do nothing to help them, as there was no cover in the middle of the road.

Quite a few were still left, at least five of them from Alexia's brief survey of the battlefield. She gripped her pistol hard and flipped the safety off - the initial shock of the situation was gone, her survival instinct setting in. When she heard a break in the gunfire, Alexia rose up and fired a couple of shots in their direction, following Jess's lead. Having fired heavier pistols before, she was able to control the recoil of the double-action first shot, followed by a single-action second shot. Despite this, she didn't hit anything, and the deafening noise of gunfire made it almost impossible for her to focus. She realized that having time to line up her shots was a luxury she had massively overlooked during her years of hunting. The air reeked of gunpowder, a scent Alexia normally liked, but this smell was heavy, suffocating and tinged with iron, making her stomach turn.

Jess fired a burst from her Micro SMG without looking, which caused another scream to erupt from across the street. She followed this up by breaking cover and firing a full-auto barrage at her attackers.

"AAAAAAHHH, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS!"

Jess kept firing until her gun clicked empty, shell casings raining down on the pavement by her feet. She reached a hand into her purse and fetched a spare magazine while Alexia kept pressure on the gangsters with her pistol, although she still wasn't hitting anything. The constant anxiety of having to duck bullets, feeling the vibrations of the metal of Jess's car as it was struck, all while her ears were ringing from the constant gunfire, was such a far cry from what she was used to that her brain was scattered. She wanted to survive, but she didn't know how.

Apart from Jess's car, which was emitting smoke from its bullet-pierced engine, the underpass was bereft of cover. All the gangsters that weren't dead or dying were hunkering down in the alleyway, shooting at the girls from a distance. One of the men had left the alley and had his back to a concrete pillar, which supported the Olympic Freeway bridge above their heads. This man was the furthest away from Alexia, but he was a little more exposed than the other gangsters. Alexia could see his foot sticking out from the pillar, but her pistol wouldn't cooperate – he was too far away for her to get a decent shot.

Alexia found herself intensely focused on the man's foot, clad in a yellow sneaker that was soaked in the blood of his friends. The color reminded her of a meadowlark, one of the many prairie birds that frequented the plains of South Yankton. She didn't like to kill these birds because they were tiny and not worth the hassle of cooking, but their bright yellow plumage made them easy targets whenever there was snow on the ground. After she'd gotten good at shooting bottles, her uncle had instructed her on shooting birds. A meadowlark had been her very first kill made with her dad's old .22 caliber rifle. She didn't remember her dad, but from what her uncle had told her, he was a natural marksman and one of the best deer hunters in town, but he'd had trouble keeping work and supporting his family. Struggling with depression and a turbulent marriage to Alexia's mother, he'd gone out to a nice, quiet spot on the prairie and shot himself in the chest with a shotgun, shortly after his daughter's third birthday and before the birth of his twin boys, Alexia's brothers.

The sounds of screaming and dying men were replaced by something else – silence, emptiness, like the flat, treeless plains after a hard snow. Her and the man trying to kill her were the only two entities in the universe. Everything else was blackness, an endless and timeless void. She'd experienced the same thing back in South Yankton when she was a kid, her uncle kneeling beside her, her gun aimed at the meadowlark pecking for worms in the drifted snow.

Alexia took a deep breath in through her nose, exhaling through her mouth, her breaths the only sound in the void. Each bristle of the yellow feathers slowed down, almost like the meadowlark was swimming in oil. Everything around her moved at a crawl, giving Alexia time to aim her gun and fire a bullet that shattered the gangster's right ankle. As he fell to the ground, Alexia emptied two more shots into his back that pierced through his chest, a gush of blood soaking through the front of his yellow jersey. He hit the ground, and his muscles convulsed for a bit, but Alexia's bullet had pierced his heart. He was dead in seconds.

The world came back into focus. Alexia blinked, and the automatic gunfire came back at full blast, forcing her back down behind the trunk of Jess's car.

"Whoa, I think you got one!" said Jess with a big smile. "Great job, Lexi, I knew you could do it!"

Alexia didn't smile back at Jess. Instead, she looked down at her gun, from which smoke was still drifting from the barrel, carried up like a soul to Heaven. The iron aftertaste to the gunpowder smell grew sour, like rotting ham, making Alexia's skin turn pale and goosebumps to bristle under the sleeves of her flannel. Her scalp felt incredibly hot, like she had been running a marathon in the desert.

She dry-heaved, trying not to think about what she'd just done. The man in the yellow jersey had tried to kill her first, but she knew this wasn't self-defense. She'd been there for the express purpose of disrupting his drug deal. These exchanges of merchandise had probably been how the man had supported himself and his family, if he had one. Alexia's mind repeated the fact that she didn't even know his name, and yet she had shot him like a dog, staining the sidewalk with his blood.

She felt a firm hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, Alexia, it's gonna be okay!" said Jess. "You just stay with me now, girlfriend, don't go quiet on me!"

A high-pitched whine emitted from underneath Alexia's fingers, which were clasped around her mouth, and streaks of tears rolled down her clammy cheeks. Jess continued trying to console her, but she was interrupted by a shout in Spanish from one of the Vagos gangsters, who broke cover and was charging toward the car, spraying it with bullets. Jess stuck her hand out of cover, blind-firing her Micro SMG and littering the man's chest with bullets. He fell backwards among the bodies of his friends, choking on his own blood. Jess's car was pouring black smoke from its engine from this latest assault.

Seeing no time to lose, Jess snatched her ammo-laden purse and fired another burst at the one remaining gangster, then hauled Alexia to her feet with one hand, even though black was encroaching on Alexia's vision and she could hardly stand. Black was also encroaching on the pink paint of Jess's car as an oil-fueled inferno raged under the hood. Alexia felt Jess's grip seize around her elbow.

"LOOK OUT, IT'S GONNA BLOW!"

Jess dragged Alexia in a mad sprint across the street while shooting her gun one-handed. Just as they reached the opposite end of the street, Jess's car was engulfed in flames. Alexia felt the rush of heat and the stench of burning rubber as the car was immolated, a bonfire in the absence of any wood.

Alexia struggled to walk as Jess threw her against a wall, her back cushioning the impact somewhat. She could hear voices inside shouting in Spanish, with a few English words mixed in.

"I'll take the lead, Lexi, you just back me up!" Jess rose from her own spot of cover just outside the graffitied alleyway and fired in, striking a Vagos member once in the knee, then several more times in the neck and chest.

The voices were much closer now, bouncing off the painted walls, as were the ricochets of Jess's bullets. Seeing a break in the gunfire, Jess put on her skull mask before entering the alleyway, shooting as she ran. Alexia followed suit and pulled her own mask over her head, causing hot breath to encompass her face, which was soaked in a hot mix of tears and sweat. Without thinking, Alexia fired some more pistol shots at an approaching gangster. She cringed as she heard his scream - her round had hit him in the shin, spraying blood over the filthy concrete. Jess slid into cover behind a wooden crate, firing her machine gun wildly at anyone in shooting distance, including the man Alexia had wounded.

Alexia didn't think it possible, but the enclosed space of the alleyway was even louder than it had been under the overpass. The concrete walls carried the sound of hundreds of tiny explosions, rattling Alexia's brain in her skull and causing her to cry out in pain, cupping her hands desperately to her ears. The muscles in her back tensed up as bullets impacted the thick stack of boxes she was standing behind, all while sweat poured down her face and drenched her clothes.

She didn't know why the thought was occurring to her at that moment. Why hadn't it popped up at the street race against Noël, or the moment when her uncle had told her she'd have to attend military-style training in the desert, despite having no such experience? Alexia supposed she had duped herself into believing that everything was fine and that she could make it work, but the ambush and subsequent shootout caused her to ask something she felt should have been asked long ago:

'What the hell have I gotten myself into?'

Alexia's vision was clouded by gobs of sweat that dripped off her eyelashes, smearing the mascara she'd applied about half an hour ago. She could feel her own stamina draining, but Jess didn't look like she was slowing down a bit. Alexia couldn't really tell through Jess's skull mask, the same one she'd worn at the street race, but something about her movements and her body language told her she was having a bit of fun as she mowed down Vagos gangsters and a few Ballas, advancing deeper into the alleyway.

The maze of graffiti ended in a parking lot. It was surrounded on three sides by a chain-link fence, too high to scale, on the other side of which was an endless field of rubble and a homeless camp, which had been vacated by the sound of gunfire.

A tollbooth sat to then girls' right. One remaining gangster had been hiding here and popped up, trying to surprise the girls, but was met with a spray of bullets by Jess, staining the windows of the tollbooth with red. The man's gold chain almost flew off his neck from the force with which he was blown back.

"The drugs aren't here," said Jess, her voice muffled by her skull mask as she panted in the sulfur-smelling air. "You okay, Alexia?"

"I…" Alexia struggled for breath underneath her mask, lifting the bottom portion over her chin so she could breathe. Jess gave her some firm pats on the back to aid her gasps for air.

"That's okay, just save your breath. You're doing great so far," said Jess. "That guy I just killed may have been Diego. He had a pretty nice gold chain on him, so he was probably a dealer. Curtis may have just taken the merchandise and bailed, but maybe we could still catch him if we hurry."

Jess took Alexia's hand in her own, her soft manicured fingers closing around it, then led her crewmate past the tollbooth and into the alleyway.

"I'm gonna get you paid, Lexi, don't worry!" Jess shouted as she ran. "And that son of a bitch Curtis is gonna learn exactly what it means to mess with the Skulls!"

Alexia's legs felt like jelly, ready to give out underneath her as she and Jess emerged out of the alleyway and back onto Power Street. A car was approaching, a black SUV with an elderly man and a much younger woman inside. Jess brandished her gun at them, and the car screeched to a halt. She discharged a few shots into the air, and the car's occupants stumbled as they ran from the SUV, allowing Jess to climb in and Alexia to join her. Jess burned rubber as the SUV hopped the median and hurtled south toward Chamberlain Hills.

Jess lifted her skull mask back to her forehead, as did Alexia. Both girls were panting with exhaustion, but mostly Alexia, whose lungs felt like they were on fire. Jess turned the A/C all the way up, and Alexia gratefully leaned into it, feeling the breeze on her sweaty face.

"I think he may have gone down this way," Jess said, pointing to the south. "That's where I know the Vagos hood is. Shouldn't be hard to pick out a skinny white dude in a Panic jersey." Jess pointed at a shiny black object lying in the road. "Look over there, that's his skull mask! We have to be on his ass now!"

"S-sure…" Alexia coughed, choking on the breath that returned to her lungs.

"You alright?" Jess placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Y-yeah, I just…" Alexia wiped her mouth. "That was a lot more…hectic than I was expecting."

"Yeah, well, that was kinda my fault," Jess admitted with a frown. "I only started dating Curtis three weeks ago. Normally, you only do these jobs with people you know well because so many things can go wrong, as you saw back there."

"Definitely…" Alexia grimaced.

"But hey, look on the bright side," said Jess. "After we kill his ass and deliver those drugs, we'll get Curtis's share of whatever Gerald was gonna pay us." She smiled. "I know a lot of fun things we can do around the city with that extra money, but like you said, let's focus on the job for now."

Jess slammed on the brakes suddenly, throwing Alexia forward in her seat. She'd forgotten to put on a seatbelt and almost slammed head-first into the dash, putting a hand out to stop her momentum.

"Shit, look!"

Jess pointed to an alleyway off Strawberry Avenue that ran between a Lucky Plucker chicken restaurant and the Ring of Fire Chili House. However, Jess wasn't interested in getting food – instead, she'd spotted the purple Panic jersey on a white guy, something not really seen in an area where the purple-clad Ballas predominated. Curtis was quick to spot Jess as well and pulled the trigger of his Micro SMG, but it failed to fire, having run out of ammo long ago. Jess revved the SUV's engine and gave chase, Curtis sprinting for his life down the alleyway.

"Hold onto your butt, Lexi!" Jess shouted.

Alexia gripped the back of her seat as Jess drove at full speed down the alleyway, which ended in a locked chain-link fence gate that Curtis was trying desperately to scale in a blind panic. His fingers clawed at the metal fence, trying to gain a foothold as the front of the SUV slammed into his back, breaking the fence from its hinges and sending it flying into an extension of the alleyway that led to a dead end.

A streak of blood ended in a crumpled heap of flesh and exposed bone at the far end of the alley, from which pitiful cries were emanating. Curtis's spine was wrenched by the impact, his right leg bent backwards and his jersey torn to shreds. The cries soon turned to screams of agony, which Alexia tried to muffle with hands over her ears.

"I'll be right back," said Jess as she exited the SUV, leaving the driver's side door open.

Alexia watched as she walked slowly up to her boyfriend, whose leg she noticed had a compound fracture that she could only look at for a couple of seconds without getting nauseous chills.

"Hey there, baby." Jess smiled as she approached him. "Did you miss me?"

"Oh fuck, Jess, please, you gotta help me!" Curtis panted through the pain, his face white as a ghost.

Jess blinked. "Help you?"

"Yeah, look, I-I'm sorry, okay?" Curtis was crying. "I fucked up. I know I fucked up. Now please, take me to a hospital. I'll leave, and I'll never come back." His voice tightened. "I don't wanna die, Jess, please…"

"Well, you do look like you're in pain." Jess pondered for a moment, then perked up. "Ooh, I know what'll help! How about some sexy time?"

"W-what…?"

Jess raised her gun and fired two rounds into Curtis's crotch, obliterating his balls. A shriek of agony arose as he writhed about on the ground, his broken leg trailing behind him, interspersed by peals of laughter from Jess. She was hunched over, pointing at Curtis like he was a clown dancing for money.

"OH GOD, HELP ME! SOMEBODY FUCKING HELP ME!"

"SHUT UP!" Jess stomped her foot on the asphalt, her face twisted in a scowl. "Do you know what the boss would've done to you for almost getting his niece fucking killed?!" She scoffed. "Compared to that, I'd say you're getting off pretty fucking easy! Now hold still!"

Curtis shook his head rapidly, but Jess raised her gun again and blew out his left kneecap, producing more high-pitched screams. Alexia watched dumbfounded in the passenger seat – as grotesque as the whole spectacle was, she couldn't look away. Not even an hour ago, Jess had been kissing and hugging this man, and now she was making sure he died as slowly as possible, bleeding him out like a pig. What that said for Jess's mental state, Alexia didn't know – she wondered if this was a standard Skull procedure for dealing with traitors in the field, or if it was Jess having her own psychotic brand of fun.

After a few more bullets to his ankles and shoulders, Curtis was fading fast from blood loss. Without a word, Jess raised her gun again and shot him between the eyes. He fell on his back, air heaving from his lungs, finally dead.

Jess blinked again, seeming to come back to reality. She looked down at the corpse, then back at Alexia, who was frozen, trembling in the passenger seat. Jess sighed, picking up the package of drugs that Curtis had dropped, then climbed back in the SUV, her face calm as she buckled her seatbelt.

The air remained silent between the girls as Jess backed out of the alleyway. The wails of police sirens approached Strawberry Avenue, but Jess navigated away from the bloody scene, taking an alternate route to Gerald's apartment on Forum Drive.

Alexia stared ahead, hardly even blinking. She tried to process the things she'd just seen and done, but her mind wouldn't allow this, not when the images were so fresh and her clothes still reeked of gunpowder. Going in, she'd had a faint idea of what to expect – there would be death, and she had tried to prepare herself for that. However, she hadn't expected anything like the pandemonium of this, an entry-level job in the Skulls.

Of the many thoughts jumbled in Alexia's head and struggling to be processed by her brain, only one stood out: that she had made a huge mistake coming to Los Santos. Even after reminding herself that she was doing this to make money for her family, Alexia couldn't figure a way that she could possibly live with herself in an environment like this, which seemed to promote chaos, senseless killing and mutilation in the name of…

In the name of what?

She struggled to comprehend a reason for this level of brutality. The man she'd killed had died soaked in his own blood, a bullet in his ankle and two in his chest. Maybe he was a bad person, but she didn't know that for sure. At any rate, was he any worse than Jess or Curtis or her uncle or any other cold-blooded murderer in the Black Skulls? Was he any worse than the twenty-year-old Midwestern girl that had pulled the trigger?

Alexia wondered if she should have turned herself in. She would have been convicted and sent to prison, and she wouldn't have a way to make money for her family, but the world may have been better off as a whole. She couldn't count how many people had just died, all so she and Jess could get a paycheck and a few junkies could get their fix.

Jess pulled the SUV into an alley next to Gerald's apartment complex, a crumbling old housing project littered with trash and with walls adorned with gang symbols. While the exterior was different than her own apartment building, Alexia supposed they were the same in that they both harbored criminals.

Alexia felt Jess's hand on top of her own. Jess smiled at her, but Alexia couldn't smile back. She looked at the tight green dress and the designer heels, like something that would be worn to a graduation party instead of a shootout. Maybe, she thought, the whole thing really was a party to Jess, who had killed way more people than her and yet was barely affected by it.

Taking her friend by the hand, Jess led her out of the SUV and into the apartment's courtyard. Jess handed her the package of drugs, a brown, sand-like powder encased in a few layers of plastic wrap and secured with masking tape. Hardly worth the death of so many people, Alexia thought as she knocked on the door of unit number six.

Gerald opened the door a crack, one anxious eye scanning the courtyard.

"Hey," he said in a low whisper. "You got the dope?"

"Of course she got the fuckin' dope, man," another familiar voice rang from the hallway. "I told yo' ass not to question this girl, man, she the boss's niece, man."

Lamar appeared in the hallway with a damp washcloth held to his forehead. His nose was running, and Alexia immediately knew why. Flecks of white were visible on his shirt. Gerald opened the door wider.

"What's happenin' with it, baby?" Lamar offered his hand to Alexia, which she briefly shook. "'Ay, man, I just got off the phone with my boy Simeon. He's got yo' car over at LS Customs, near the airport. Just head on over there, and they should give you back the keys. Shouldn't even cost you nothin'."

"Free car repair?" Jess grinned at Alexia. "Oh, you lucked out, girlfriend. That means the guy's gonna want something in return down the road. Probably a repossession job or something, which is pretty easy money."

Alexia grimaced. Was this 'easy money' Jess mentioned more chaos and bloodshed? She certainly hoped not; she hoped there was a much cleaner way to do these jobs that didn't involve wiping an entire gang out of the gene pool.

"Hey." Gerald scratched his chin. "The boss said there was gonna be three of you."

"Oh, yeah. Number three betrayed us," Jess remembered with a scowl. "My boyfriend. He went up to the Vagos and told them we were there to shake up the deal. But we put him and his friends down." She sighed deeply, looking at Lamar. "So yeah, I guess I'm not taken anymore."

"Shiiiit, that sucks, man, I feel for you," Lamar said with a sniff. "But, uh, you gonna gimme yo' number now, baby?"

Jess smiled. "Okay. You give me some of that white you've been snorting, and I'll give you my number. Maybe we can party sometime."

Lamar clapped his hands. "Aight, hold on a second."

He shuffled off into the apartment, and Alexia handed Gerald the packaged drugs. He fetched some cash from his back pocket, which he divided in half before giving it to the girls. Taking the bills, Alexia's eyes grew wide – this was definitely more than she'd taken from the cash registers at those liquor stores she'd robbed.

"Seven hundred fifty," Gerald said. "I gave you two the homeboy's share that betrayed you. Seemed right."

"Thanks, Gerald." Jess smiled as she stuffed the money in her purse. "Alexia did really well for her first job, by the way. She even killed one of the guys that were shooting at us. And they all had machine guns too, she just had her pistol."

"Not bad," Gerald said quietly as he looked hard at Alexia. "That was your first shootout?"

Alexia nodded. She couldn't bring herself to make eye contact with him, like she had at the street race.

"Well, you be responsible with that money," Gerald said seriously. "And if you ever need more of it, I've always got jobs need doing. You've got my number, so call me up sometime if you're interested."

"Okay." Alexia's voice was hollow as she said this, her eyes downcast.

Lamar appeared from the doorway with an ounce of cocaine, which he handed to Jess. As she inspected the saran-wrapped package, she read him her number, which he immediately entered in his phone.

"Oh hell yeah!" Lamar sniffed again, wiping at his nose. "Aight, I'ma hit you up later tonight after the party, baby. You'll see, I ain't really a pencil dick, or whatever it was you called me."

"I think I'll be the judge of that," Jess said with a smirk. "Let's go, Alexia."

"'Ay, Alexia, I'll see you later!" Lamar called out. "Maybe we can bump that 80's shit you was playin' the other night! Whatever you like, man!"

Alexia attempted a smile, waving at Lamar as the door closed to Gerald's apartment, leaving the courtyard in a silence that wracked Alexia's nerves. Jess led the way out of the apartment complex and back to the stolen SUV.

"Alright, so I guess I'll take you to LS Customs," said Jess. "After that, we can keep hanging out or we can go our separate ways. Were you still wanting to go to the party?"

Alexia sighed. As much as she felt like going back to her apartment to de-stimulate by herself, she remembered her uncle's words about making connections and talking to people. She knew that wallowing in her own self-pity wouldn't get her any closer to financial stability, and it also wouldn't get her brothers a college education.

"Yeah," Alexia said quietly. "Yeah, I'll go."

"You don't have to if you don't wanna." Jess stopped, putting a hand on Alexia's shoulder. "Look, I'm not gonna pretend that wasn't a complete shitfest back there. If you need some time to chill out, I won't think lesser of you for it."

Alexia's eyes rose from the pavement and up to the tall girl in front of her.

"Jess?"

"Yeah?"

"I…" Alexia swallowed. "Thank you, for saving my life back there…I know I probably would've taken a bullet in the head if you hadn't been there."

"Of course, Lexi." Jess grinned. "We look out for each other in this crew. I've been in for almost four years now, since I was nineteen. I was really overwhelmed by all of it when I was starting out, but the other Skulls always had my back. I never would have gotten this far if I didn't have some help."

Alexia nodded slowly, and Jess pulled her new crewmate into a tight hug, pressing Alexia's smaller body against hers.

Jess sighed. "Listen, I apologize for torturing Curtis like that in front of you. We have a saying in the Skulls that traitors should be dealt with slowly and painfully, to send a message…But I should've realized that you're new to all this, and you're still trying to process everything. I was just so mad that he betrayed us and almost got you killed, y'know?"

"Yeah, th-that's okay," said Alexia. "Look, could you, um…"

Jess looked down – Alexia was much shorter than her, and her face was pushed firmly into Jess's bust, muffling her voice and restricting her breathing. Jess released her from the hug, and Alexia drew back, red in the face and panting for breath, a hand raised to her chest.

"Sorry." Jess smiled nervously.

Alexia nodded, wiping some droplets from her forehead.

"God, our clothes kinda reek now, don't they?" Jess's nose wrinkled as she sniffed her armpit. "All that sweat and gunpowder…Hey, after we get your car, why don't I buy us some new clothes? I could get you a nice dress or something for the party. My treat."

"A…dress?" Alexia said this like she'd never heard the word before.

"Hell yeah, girl." Jess smiled. "I like the rocker chick look on you, but a lot of girls look better in a nice dress. I think it could really bring out your natural beauty."

Alexia looked down at her sweat-stained flannel and her Love Fist tank top. How Jess could look at this and see 'natural beauty' was beyond her understanding – she'd grown up firmly believing she was ugly, but nothing about Jess's words seemed forced or sarcastic, and Alexia also didn't think she was high at that moment. By all accounts, Jess seemed completely genuine in this assessment.

"Sure."

A brief smile flashed across Alexia's face, and Jess squealed in delight. She hugged Alexia again, making sure this time to not smother her with her chest.

Alexia's step was a bit lighter as she followed Jess to the stolen car. She found herself starting to trust the tall blonde girl, which she hadn't thought possible a few minutes ago, when she'd watched Jess shoot a man's balls off in broad daylight, then agree to meet up with Lamar for sex before Curtis's body was even cold. Looking back over it in her head, Jess clearly had some problems, mental issues that had probably never been addressed.

But then again, Alexia thought…was she any better?