VIII-Secret Squirrel (Rayne's People)

[Deleted]

The small thumping sound a knife made when it entered flesh filled his ears, and the loud clatter as a glass tipped over on the dinner table came next. The beverage spilled out, the amber liquid mixing with the red blood as they both pooled together. Drips sounded as the liquid dropped to the table, and Daniel took a step back for a moment. He waited for a few moments, waited until he saw the flow of blood start to slow. The target was dead, that much was certain. More than half his blood had left the small puncture hole in the right side of his neck. But Daniel always stuck around for a bit, to make sure that he did indeed do the deed he had been paid for.

Reaching into the pocket of his suit, he withdrew the note in the plastic baggie and tossed it into the pool of blood. Not a suicide note, but a warning note from the client. Mr. Traeger here had been a bad boy. He’d crossed the wrong people, and they wanted everyone to know that that couldn’t be allowed. Traeger’s flunkies would be here soon, and they would call in the cleaner to cover up the crime. Easy hundred grand for Daniel.

He was gone in an instant, the same as when he had arrived. Back at his own apartment, he walked over to the fridge and took a look inside. Playing eenie-meenie-miney-moe with two bottles in front of him, he finally grabbed the small bottle of skim chocolate milk and twisted the cap off. He took a few swigs and then reached for the blade he had done the deed with. The entire sheath came out of its pocket with a tug, and he tossed it into the sink. He would destroy it later, but in the meantime he didn’t want to drip blood all over the place.

Stripping pieces of the suit off as he walked toward the living room, he littered pieces of it on the couch as he sat in the recliner. The modified wetsuit was the perfect thing for his work. It ensured that he left no traces of himself at any crime scene, and the ceramic plating he’d put in place was all but bulletproof. It also had pockets sewn all over for different knives, his gun, small supplies he liked to keep on hand, and a large pocket for anything he may be ordered to retrieve. He wore it on all jobs that didn’t require him to blend in with the general public.

Taking another drink of the milk, he was about to lean back and see what was on TV when the cell phone on the table next to him rang. He set the remote on the table and picked it up.

”Hello? he answered in a flat, neutral voice.

[NPC]

It was a good thing he answered the phone with relative quickness. She did not like to be kept waiting. Her employer was more patient, in some things. In other she had to stay his hand. Here, though, he had taken his own sweet time, which actually irritated her somewhat. Not that she felt she should be calling the shots, but the longer Moncrieffe was walking around, the more likely it was that someone would find and examine her, and come to unwanted conclusions.

"You've been busy, haven't you?" The voice on the other side of Briggs' call was smooth and had a warm Southern lilt to it. She'd picked up on Southern accents. They put people at ease. Not that that was necessary in this case, but she liked to practice. "I hope you have room in your schedule for one more." She continued, not quite caring what his answer would be. She already knew.

"This should be brief, thankfully. The mark's in your town. We dropped her into a pitiful motel room on the seedy side of Queens. She'll look for food and drink for a while, but I doubt she'll stray too far. Her mind is a little out of it. But don't worry. When it's time, I'll call back and give you her… exact location." The very brief pause indicated an upturn of the lips, a smirk, like one might give when telling a naughty pun.

"Your time is valuable, of course. We think it's worth two hundred grand. And if you execute this little deed perfectly, we might even toss in another few hundred grand. Lucky for you, it's easy. Go to the girl, terminate her in any way you like, and get rid of the body. That's the important part. The body must never be found. Don't worry about proof. We'll know."

Another brief pause. "Thanks for the chat. I've got to go. The girl's name is Dido Moncrieffe. Once you're ready, which we will also know, you'll get that location. From then, it's all you. Ciao."

She hung up, having given Daniel no opportunity to speak at all. It wasn't necessary, she felt. Daniel knew what he was doing. And aside from the no-body part, he'd find this one the easiest and most freestyle job of his career.

~~~~~

Indeed, Dido had wandered listlessly to a corner market. The chips and desserts called to her. She had no money, unfortunately. There was an ATM nearby, though. She took a few hundred out using her technopathy, and returned to buy the food. The shopkeeper wasn't paying attention, though, so in the end she just walked out with them.

She retraced her steps back to the nondescript motel. It was the only home she had for the moment, and the only thing she remembered after the attack on DC. She'd thought only a few days had passed since then, until some newspaper had given her the date of more than a year after. Where had she been? You couldn't sleep a year away, could you? Or maybe the police had got her and she'd been in lockup and her mind repressed the memory. Minds did that sometimes.

The streets were dark and she was munching on a pie, paying little attention to her surroundings. No one seemed particularly interested in her anyway. She looked like crap with the tattered and old clothes she was wearing. She felt like she had crawled out of a trash can. No matter, though. The motel had a shower and she could buy some new clothes the next day.

It didn't really matter whether she reached the motel or Daniel intercepted her there or on her way. The location he got was exact. Down to the moment. It was almost as though someone was tracking her.

[Deleted]

It was an interesting thing, the fact that whoever had called him had such a good handle on the location of the target. He had swept the area when he’d gotten here, and he didn’t see any kind of surveillance on the area. No people watching either her or him, no cameras that didn’t belong, nothing. This was the work of someone who could observe without being in the area. A few methods came to mind. Satellite imagery, hacking into the closed circuit cameras around. Or the more extraordinary methods. Remote viewing, psychic abilities of some sort. Maybe an invisible spy… Odd, but not anything he wasn’t used to. He knew the kind of things even normal people could do with a shitty laptop computer or even a smart phone these days, so that aspect didn’t surprise him as much as it should have.

He knew who Dido was, knew where she would be. Problem being, she was in far too public a place right now… It would be the dumbest thing he could ever do if he was to go up and kill her right now. No, he had to wait for a little bit. She had to have a place to go. Right now, she looked like shit, and she was eating like she hadn’t eaten for some time. She was probably holed up in an alley somewhere. Someplace that a normal person going about their business wouldn’t think of looking. Those were the kind of places that Daniel thrived in…

He leaned back in his chair and played Texas Hold’em on his phone, sipping the glass of water in front of him and waiting on the grilled chicken that was coming from the kitchen at the sidewalk café he was at. He had a perfect view of her in the corner of his eye, a set amount of money in his right pocket to facilitate him being able to walk off in a hurry without having someone come after him for a dine and dash. It paid to have all of your ducks in a row.

He kept an eye on her until she got up from her spot and started to leave, sighing and fishing the money out of his pocket. He made a show of counting it up to buy him a bit of time. He didn’t want to get too close to her, or she would realize she was being followed. No, he just needed to stay a block or so away from her.

He followed her for about ten minutes, back to some really shitty motel. The kind of place that probably rented rooms by the hour. Good place to go if you wanted to hide. The desk clerk probably wasn’t too keep on checking ID. Cash was the only language that was spoken in this kind of place.

She entered a room on the far end of the motel, and he gave his ankle a slight roll to the outside. The dagger was still in place. He didn’t have a gun on him at the moment. Didn’t want to use it and risk letting everyone on the block know what was going on. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t even have to use that. Would make cleanup a lot quicker.

He strolled over toward her door and gave it a casual look. He heard the faint sound of the shower running inside. Perfect time to take her by surprise. He gave it another few seconds and teleported into the room. The gap under the door made it like walking through a railroad tunnel. He took a look around, seeing the door that led to the bathroom at the far end of the room. Everything else was… Clean. It looked like no one had been living here. No personal items around. It looked more like housekeeping hadn’t been in to make the beds. If this place even had a housekeeper…

Taking a breath and walking over to the door, he peeked through the crack and saw the shadow behind the curtain. Now or never.

[Dido Moncrieffe]

With a sigh of annoyance, Dido looked at her arm. Four scratches ran down it, breaking the false skin and exposing the materials of the replacement arm beneath it. She had noticed it before, it just irritated her every time she looked at it. It meant she would have to get her hands on a bottle of false skin, which she knew she could only get by bribing her contact at the Ark Industries headquarters. The contact was a low-ranked scientist who was particularly impressed by Dido's beauty and sympathetic to her plight. Ark had gifted her the prosthetic limbs she needed, but then had turned around and experimented on her for it.

Once she got out of the shower, she would try to look for her cell phone again. It had disappeared. She could not remember where she had last seen it. In fact, she did not remember anything much after the attack on DC. And she felt odd. She felt nothing. She remembered having been a cold woman, but she had not been utterly unable to feel, the way she did now. Everything was just bland.

She looked down when a brown shape appeared at her feet. She kicked it away, and it careened over the side of the tub and down the curtain to land on the bathroom floor, then scurry away. Somehow she was not surprised that this place was infested. It looked like shit, she looked like shit, and she felt like… nothing. Still. Well, a shopping trip would cheer her up. She could find an ATM and relieve it of its cash stores, then head over to Manhattan and take a long stroll down Fifth Avenue. Retail therapy. It really did wonders. So did getting a five-star hotel, and changing into real clothes, and having a real meal. She wondered why she hadn't thought of this before.

With another sigh, Dido stepped out the shower and reached for the towel that was folded up on the toilet seat. She had a thought about how clean that towel really was before wrapping herself up in it anyway. She had no clothes at the moment save the ratty ones from before, but at least she was clean now. She dried herself off, squeezed the water out of her hair, and then, turning her back to the door, reached down to pick up her clothes, as she had dropped them on the floor without thinking that she would have to wear them again. No matter.

[Deleted]

Daniel stood as still and as quiet as a statue. To an onlooker, it may have been up for debate if he were even breathing or not. People often thought of his job as quick and dirty. That was true at times, but there were also times like this. When he had to sit and be patient. Where he had to avoid moving, for fear of alerting his target to his presence. He didn’t know what kind of person this woman was. Didn’t know what she could do. It never paid to underestimate someone. Especially if they knew the situation they were in and were ready to fight for their lives. He also didn’t know if she was a special or not. He could be walking into a room with someone that could manifest fire from their hands. That was never fun…

He watched her exit the shower, feeling like a real creep for being in this position. Oh well. He was being paid quite a bit, and he could handle a few feelings that made him want to beat the crap out of himself at a later time. He watched her dry off and reach down for her clothes, knowing that his opportunity was coming. She had her back to the door. Otherwise, she would have seen him peering through the crack. He waited a bit longer, until she covered her face with her shirt. Now was the time to strike.

He didn’t move toward her, opting to teleport instead. He was just a few inches behind her now. She would have heard him rematerialize, but his knife was already out. Making its way into the small of her back. His aim was to sever her spine. After that, she wouldn’t put up any fight, if she survived. If that didn’t kill her outright, it would be easy to finish her off.

[Dido Moncrieffe]

As Dido pulled on the ratty and dirty clothes she had been wearing before, she imagined the shopping spree she was about to take. A little help from an ATM, and the world would be hers. She could go where she wanted, get out of this nasty place. A week at the Hamptons would do her some good. Or maybe on Tahiti. She'd have to decide later. First would be some new clothes and a warm, big meal.

She didn't notice the presence behind her until the blade slipped past her skin. As it sank father into the small of her back, she screamed, then dropped to her knees, her legs having lost control, her entire body beginning to feel uncomfortable. She felt herself bleeding out, and suddenly she was very cold, and the last thought she had before slumping into a heap on the floor, never even looking back to view her attacker, was how so very cold, after feeling so little, the world suddenly was.

----fin Dido---

[Deleted]

Daniel held the knife in place for a few moments after the target had stopped moving. He'd clamped his hand over her mouth to keep her scream from traveling very far. Not that any of the kind of people who called this place home would even think to call the police. No matter. He knew what he was going to do with the body.

He held onto her tightly, leaving the knife inside her wound, and put his hand down to touch the pool of blood as well. The entire scene disappeared from sight as if it had never happened.

The move took them from the crappy motel in New York to a very remote spot in the Nevada Desert. This was his comfort zone, and though the employers may have been iffy about him taking the body to a place that was so close to home, so to speak, he'd do as they wanted in a way few others could.

Blood stained the sand, which would make this more difficult, but not impossible. He laid his hands on her body, idly wondering what kind of person she had been and what she had done to earn the ire of his employers. Shrugging the thoughts away, he focused his mind and teleported again. He came back in the same place he had been, but she didn't. He'd separated their molecules mid-transport and reassembled his own, but not hers. Soon, the wind would scatter what was left of her to the four corners of the earth. God himself wouldn't be able to gather the pieces and put the body back together. He did the same with the blood that had pooled into the sand, and as an afterthought, went back to the motel room to look it over. She didn't have any luggage with her. No person effects of any kind. He decided to play it safe and took the sheet and comforter from the bed, and the towel she had used, and took them with him. All the way to the laundry mat down the street, where he tossed them into a washing machine to be forgotten. Any evidence of her on them would be destroyed.

He went back to his 'home', more accurately the apartment he had been at when he'd gotten the call, and retook his spot at the chair. He imagined he'd be getting a call soon.

[NPC]

As expected, Daniel’s phone did ring in short order. The voice on the other end was the same one he had heard the first time, the woman with the Southern lilt. “Congratulations. You’ve pulled it off quite nicely, haven’t you? A clean end, and your disposal of the body was ingenious. We are especially pleased about that, as you might guess.” She chuckled. “You’ll receive a sizable sum very soon. You may expect it this evening. I spoke of two hundred grand. You’ll get quite more than that. Good work should always be rewarded well, don’t you think?”

The girl had already been dead, after a fashion. A ghost, a shell walking the street. Still, her presence, the animation of her body, had been a threat to their activities, and so they’d had to tie that up as neatly as possible. Daniel had always been dependable for that. As before, the woman did not pause long enough for Daniel to have a chance to speak. “Thank you again. You take care of yourself now.”

The call ended with an abrupt click. On the other end, the young woman sighed and ran a hand through her wavy black hair. This was not the sort of work one typically did as a personal assistant, but then again, she had a very unusual employer.

The sort who would pay whatever he felt to a friend who had done good work for him, whether Daniel knew it or not.

-fin-