Liz didn't look at the broad picture; she felt she'd found why she, herself, had been invented.
But she harbored something until it popped. She wrote, in her book on Tset, which she'd kept from him and always would, that, 'It festered with me, and caused me anguish underneath everything he did. And like any sore, eventually, it burst, and loosed its poison and I wasn't able to live with myself anymore.'
Tset, a month later, stood in an elevator and thought that now he was most definitely complete. This was new, this smile always on his face, not a smirk, a smile. At least a grin, when they were together and they played.
It was odd, he felt, distantly. This wasn't him. He greeted people, he kept the swearing to a minimum.
He hadn't killed anyone. His past was behind him.
'Or maybe this is me? I can't remember.' He also couldn't care.
He thought over how the Men at Haliburton had debriefed him the Monday after the Club - he'd sat in front of them as they explained that Z Section had been exposed and routed, thanks to his efforts.
They paid him.
He had thanked them and walked back out into the lobby and out to his car, where Liz was waiting for him in the passenger seat. She was looking beautiful and radiant, and they both made the solid pact they would never look back.
Tset's education of life for life's sake had been greatly expanded by all that transpired between he and she - aesthetics and love were never in his vocabulary before, except third hand coming via the channel of literature, and in an idyllic fashion. He'd thought about it, but had never found it to be anything more than fiction formed from pretty platitudes.
He stepped out of the elevator, on his cloud, and walked down the hall to his room.
Something was bugging him this last week, however.
Liz had become detached, like she had for a minute in the roof of the Hunters' Club - slightly cold, unable to enter the spirit of things.
He had asked her on several occasions what was on her mind, but she always said she was only hungry or cold, or needed a drink. Tset had a feeling she was hedging.
He let himself into his room and flicked on the light out of habit.
The windows were open and the drapes drifted lightly.
There was a note on the table near the bed, Tset recognized her script and felt an intense foreboding.
He lifted the letter and read it:
Tset read the note over a few times. It lacked any ring of humor but was utterly preposterous.
He went back down stairs and took his key from the valet, biking it over to Haliburton, numbed.
He wasn't sure why he was going there until he met Yonotan in the lobby.
"Read this." He handed Yonotan the letter.
Yonotan read it carefully and handed it back. "Tset, I b'sorry. Liz... sh'lef'." He sighed and looked unhappily at Tset.
"What? Why?"
"She was concern'. And she was in de Z Section, as well, or she was."
"What? Bullshit."
Yonotan nodded, "Yeh. Dey were startin' to use her to get to you. Dat's why she lef'."
Tset started to get unsettled, "Well! Fuck that! Where'd she go?"
Yonotan put his hand on Tset's shoulder, "Tset, it's not right. Jus' let 'er go."
Tset knocked the hand away, and exclaimed, "Fuck this, man." He realized he was getting looks, he didn't care.
Yonotan gave another sad smile, "Tset, let's talk. We'll work dis out, okay?"
Tset took a minute to breath and calm himself, then he nodded, "Fine. But don't expect much of a change from me."
Yonotan walked and grabbed Tset by the jacket, he laughed, "I will get what I get."
They sat at a table in a roach motel of a bar, drinking American beer.
"Tset, dis is what I am tol' - she informe' de Men of what she was involved in, and gave de names of anyone else involved dat she knew. Den, she lef'. She couldn't stick aroun', 'cause dey woul' kill her. De Men have her protected, but dey los' you for a mon' already, so aren't connectin' you two back up."
Tset nodded, "And Liz agreed?"
"I spoke wid her - she was worried about you, and it did hurt her so much to do dis but she decided it was bes'. She knows she make you vulnerable."
Tset sipped the bland brew, "Hmm."
"So, what will you do, Tset?"
"Seems I only really have one choice." He pulled his cell phone, "Gotta get something harder than this." There was a groggy reply from the other end of the line, "T? Girl troubles. Ditch your girlfriend for the night and meet me outside your place in thirty." He closed his phone.
"Good choice, Tset."
Tset looked at him levelly. "Fuck off, Yonotan. I'm still figuring things out for myself. I'll keep you appraised."
Yonotan gave another light laugh and bid Tset farewell. Tset remained where he was and simply stared at his beer.
Before Tset realized an hour had gone by, his phone vibrated, it was Tristram, "Shit, I'm sorry. I'll be over." And he left, paying his two-drink tab with a €$100 bill because he didn't care.
Interlude
Interlude
Chapter One
Tset eventually decided to drown his sorrow in bloodshed and alcohol. Work always eased his mind and in his eyes there was no work like violent, retributive vindication. He even fully adopted the name Dargent so he could work for opposing factions if he saw fit. Every contract on Haliburton's roster had his bid on it in one way or another.
Disadvantages grew out of his constant work: He never saw daylight without being attacked, though the double moniker did assist in keeping him somewhat anonymous, sometimes he was recognized by face and not by name. For this reason, he never stayed anywhere too long, he slept in dance clubs.
He killed everyone - police chiefs, politicians, drug lords, gangsters, anyone who earned a price on their head. But, again, he played judge and jury - sometimes he would take a contract on someone just, someone he believed to be good, just to get word to them.
They would flee The City at his suggestion, leaving behind only Tset's, or Dargent's, fee for the contract of his original employer. Collecting two-faced fees on people he detested made him laugh harshly.
Most of the contracts he took, he took out of spite, though; one of his great triumphs was the bullet he put in the Corneo boss.
In addition to upsetting individuals, he upset a certain balance - normally an assassin of his skill wouldn't take a €$10,000 contract. The seedy social structure began to fall apart under his salvos and Tset was hunted all the more.
He had alienated himself from his friends. They only saw cold-blooded murder when they looked at him.
They said he killed for money, he knew he killed born from a crude sense of justice and no other avenues he knew of.
This darkly heroic mentality also brought him great remuneration and some small clusters of allies - Tset owned villas on the French Riviera, one in Italy, a yacht, several cars (which he never drove) and had increased his earnings to such an extent he never knew how much he had in the bank anymore, but the aristocracies he'd earlier enraged were now appreciating the mysterious Dargent and trying to contact him, though their pawns always went missing - anyone who followed Tset was a dead man by precaution. And aside from the super-rich elitists wanting to know who he was, his just side, his good side, was being called 'Atlas' by the newsreels and the daytime folk of Greater Europe. They felt he held the world on his shoulders.
Tset did not care about the wealth, the promise of power or the attention - either bad or good - he had decided, unconsciously, to stop enjoying life and just get on with life.
His two true friends worried about him greatly.
"Dude, is this just post-partum shit over Liz?" Tristram had asked him.
Tset was repairing one of his pistols, "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"It means, I think you're taking shit a bit heavy, and getting a little PMSed out over some chick dumping you."
"When you grow up a bit, you
might learn, but until then, keep me stocked, alright?"
"Whatever. Could you at least stop treating your friends like shit?"
"No. Shut the fuck up, please, this spring is pissing me the fuck off."
"And what isn't?"
"What?"
"Nothing."
Tristram had stepped out.
Francois also had his say, as they'd worked together frequently. Tset had started the altercation in this case, during a phone call before another contract, "Francois, sorry to say, but I need your fucking help again." Tset was in a brittle mood and was trying to affect humor.
His dry tone angered Francois instead, "No! Eez zeese ze woman calling me once more? Tset, please, sil vous-plait, you do not need my help, you need some psychoserapie! Maybe electro shock, eh? Next time you call me, be sure to be civil, ozerwise I'll take zat contra-"
Tset hung up his cell phone and drove...
Interlude
Chapter Two
He thought bitter thoughts about Francois on his way across a roof - he was on top of Yomogi Corp's HQ - they'd hired him the week previous to nail one of their best programmers in the act of stealing and selling their data to Yakuza. The programmer looked like Carrot Top and called himself Toe Jam - his wild and curly mop was his most obvious feature, above the weak chin, watery eyes and pocked skin. Tset could also annihilate the programmer, and this was preferable - dead men tell no tales, or company secrets.
Things were made easier by the fact that Toe Jam was indeed committing these crimes. However, his data was impossible to trace. He wiped it every night.
Tset shrugged, now thinking about parameters, layouts and megatons and not Francois, 'C'est la vie for some of us, c'est la vie tres bon for others.' He thought of his plans for Toe Jam.
He snickered with unrevealed knowledge as he dropped into the air vent to hunt his quarry.
An hour later, now well past midnight, Tset's unmarked, identityless four-door was spotted in the parking lot by the programmer's insurance policy - in the event that something happened, or rather, someone tried to kill him, he had a remote button he simply pushed and the cavalry would arrive to protect him. It was the only way he'd agreed, knowing it was a ludicrous request and as well that Yoto-Oro had no one else to turn to.
Tset had pushed the button not ten seconds earlier, and now, the cavalry's point man, on a hill, was looking down into the lot - one car stuck out, parked in front of the entrance, with the blue glow of an LCD's backlight soft through the windows.
The Japanese mobster with the binoculars was ecstatic. He knew who'd been hired to do this mission, and even though no living man knew what he looked like he was one of two of the Yakuza's hugest stumbling blocks, the other being Dargent.
And there he was unawares, in a sedan in the middle of a parking lot.
A thought wheedled into his mind - why so easy now? After so much impossible chase and death and bloodshed, why was Tset just falling into their lap?
He dismissed it - 'Everyone fucks up sometime.' He thought.
But again, the thought. He huffed, angry with himself, and whispered distractedly while he scanned the empty lot for any signs of possible foul play - "Obviously, he waited in the car too long, Toe Jam spotted him and hit the button. The operation is waiting to go into effect and we can take advantage, okay?" He paused and finished his scan of the lot and asked again, to no one, impatiently, "Okay?" He was alone.
Then he lifted his cell phone and made the call to his buddies down the road.
Tset's LCD monitor played the repeat of Toe Jam's nightly routine back to him - Toe Jam running around, Toe Jam sending e-mails, and he had other panels going, showing recordings of his exact commands and e-mails taken directly from the computers. Tset had every illegal contact Toe Jam had made that night on disk and clearly readable.
Toe Jam stared fixedly at his screen, wanting to scream but unable to breath. He was trapped, and his cavalry was coming.
There was a dual roar and moan, Tset spotted its source right away: two vans, grey, with no rear windows and double-doors, lights off.
They came screeching into the parking lot and blocked his car in front and back. "Here comes trouble." He lit a cigarette and calmly blew smoke into the wind.
Before they'd even stopped rocking from their sudden stops, the vans disgorged eight armed men apiece - masks, combat vests and assault rifles.
Tset nodded appraisingly at the scene around his little car, appreciating the amount of effort they were putting into killing him. He dimmed his monitors so they couldn't see in anymore and the men stepped forward to form a semi-circle of sixteen, aiming their rifles in.
Then something happened that almost made Tset spring too early - darkly cloaked, pale faced men slid from the front passenger seats of the vans and drifted over to look in at him, they smiled wickedly and Tset's stomach churned. He fingered a trigger. He hated vampires and was glad he'd tinted the windows as much as he had.
Toe Jam screamed against his duct tape and jerked against his bonds.
It was no use. On his screen played his last moments - him running down to the server room, him laughing up at the cameras and busily making a show of hacking his data. He'd known someone was coming for him, he'd had a premonition, but he was supposed to be safe. He'd had his cavalry.
That cavalry crowded around outside and waited...
... the next scene played out on the monitor on the steering wheel - Toe Jam was in the server room, about to wipe his transaction, when Tset had stepped out of nowhere and broken his arm. The proceedent beating played over and over again.
Toe Jam screamed again, but the people standing outside Tset's car couldn't hear him through the tape.
He sweated, and then cried, unable to free his hands from where they'd been fastened, unable to reach up and rip off the ridiculous hairpiece he'd been planted with. Tset had told him the glue on the wig was sweat-proof. It was stage glue, for wigs, for lights and sweating.
After being glued on, Toe Jam was confused - he wasn't now. He'd gone cold despite his heartrate and despite the pain of being beaten against his own desktop.
No amount of liquid would wash the wig clear, no matter how hard he jerked his head. But jerk he did, until he heard a popping in his neck, until he almost vomited from vertigo.
And still, the gunmen would never recognize him.
Tset smiled as they opened fire - the bullets screamed into the car and shredded the interior, shredded flesh and splattered it, destroyed the computer.
They were unrelenting - Tset had always been one to stand up after gunfire had torn into him, had always lived through everything.
They emptied two fifty-round mags apiece. Sixteen men, a hundred bullets each, fifty a time in two turns, covering one another, a total of 1,600 rounds.
The car was a wreck and when one grabbed the door to show the vampires their prize, the door fell off. Blood washed out over the lip and pooled underneath. Tset slumped forward against the steering wheel he'd been strapped to.
Hesitance... that was odd.
The man in the mask grabbed the matted hair and pulled back, ripping it off and allowing reddish-gold locks to tumble over the destroyed face of Toe Jam.
The thugs had a realization. The vampires were angry and confused.
Then the thug with the Tset wig in his hand had another realization - the backseat was loaded with C4 and a little green light peeked at him from deep within the plasticine mass.
Tset took another puff on his cigarette and shifted on his motorcycle seat, he'd closed his laptop and put it back in his saddle bag when the shooting started so he could watch, instead of an endless loop of him beating a programmer.
He put his binoculars down, his smile lengthened, and he mashed the button of the detonator.
The thug's blood froze when the little green light turned red instead of green and glowered instead of peeked.
Tset felt warmth on his face from his vantage point behind where the original lookou
t had spotted 'him.' He flicked his cig dimp into a puddle and pulled the kickstand up. He looked out over the lot again - a license plate drifted, flaming, to the ground off to his left and car parts rained down for a mile.
He chuckled. He was pleased to have seen the two vampire delegates be incinerated - luckily he'd used extra explosives. They'd served a purpose aside from more flash.
Brief thoughts of if he hadn't achieved cremation - heading down the hill... stomping them, killing the lookout first, of course.
He thought the lookout was probably still down there, confused and afraid, looking out. This brought on another laugh, a snicker, darker.
The roads back into town were mostly empty and Tset cranked his headphones to max as he weaved down the highway.
Interlude
Chapter Three
Six weeks' time, six weeks' work later, and Tset stepped out of a taxi, a lit cigarette in his mouth. He was just finishing one of his rare holidays and steeling himself for his next contract; he'd been up early this morning, and his mood was already foul. He was also in the slums again, and this redoubled the storm cloud.
Thirdly, he was going to see a hiring agent he didn't like for a job from a politician he hadn't gotten around to bidding on a contract for. He ground his molars.
He rounded a corner and the stairway ahead led down to a door with a single window set high and small, like a dance club.
An ashtray was near at hand and Tset stamped his cigarette in front of it before lighting another.
An inhalation of breath, a stretch for preparation, and he hopped lightly down the stairs, skipping every other.
The peephole slid open and was about to ask for a password when Tset began pounding his fist against the steel door.
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