by Leo Champion
Diana Angela shrugged. “Didn’t tell me. Just said I was for Johnny Caustus with regards.”
The boss grinned, then raised and drained his glass. An attendant immediately replaced the tumbler. “A real gift! Have fun with her, Johnny!”
That was a relief – for a moment she’d been afraid that the tenement boss would grab her from his underling. With more time to plan she would have sent in a decoy girl, paid for but completely unaware of any assassination, but… this was an on-the-fly operation. Literally! Her heart was beating high in her chest as she sat down, Caustus putting an arm roughly around her. She forced herself to squirm instead of flinching at the child murderer’s rough grip.
The deal with this kind of thing was that you had to separate yourself from your body. They weren’t pawing at you or treating you like a piece of meat that they owned completely… they were just doing that to your surface, your skin. You tried to pretend that as you endured the grabby, grabby hands, at least…
Conversation at the table turned back to politics. Some pigeon, one of the hang-gliding mercenaries who flew across the city on the arkscrapers’ thermals, earning their living from rooftop scavenging and bombing contracts, had taken over a tenement this evening in the Bowery area. And – this perked up Diana Angela’s ears, as the tenement high-ups discussed it – declared his raff free.
“Village Commune bullshit,” the four-diamond-wearing woman scoffed. She had high cheekbones and a hard, scarred face. “But it won’t last. Wait and see.”
Diana Angela tried to tune it out, and it didn’t take long before the conversation moved on. Tenements changed hands constantly; there were thousands of them in the greater conurbation, so it was a rare few days when one or another didn’t experience new leadership. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
How the hell could a pigeon have taken over a tenement, anyway? Like everyone on the streets she hated airbornes; they served no constructive purpose but blind misery from above. And why would they care about raff?
Maybe afterwards she’d have to take a look… but for now, she made herself refocus on the man who was squeezing her tits, pretending to enjoy it and leaning into him.
“Baby,” she murmured, “I got a room paid for, too…”
* * *
Like a lot of such clubs, the Hux had its own bedrooms available for rent, and she’d quietly paid cash for one before she’d approached Caustus. She’d been given a room number and a card, which she’d stuck through a strap of her dress. Caustus, who at five foot seven would have been shorter than her without the ungainly four-inch heels she was presently in, was rock-hard and grinding himself against her ass and thighs at every opportunity. Shudders of revulsion that had to be turned into at least a passable attempt to be enjoying this.
Which she was, but for entirely different reasons. She’d identified her man and seduced him and was now going alone and unarmed, in one of the most secure parts of the street having completely fooled all of that high-end security, upstairs to make the kill. The piece of shit presently burbling in his ear about how he was going to have her anally, was already dead; the paperwork just hadn’t yet been signed. He was not going to get his rocks off on her tonight, or on any children ever again.
This one’s for Jamie, Nareendra, Glennis and the unnamed one, she thought as Caustus placed a slobbering kiss on her chin.
“Come on, baby. You can do me like that all night long, Johnny,” she said, guiding the two of them toward the elevator.
They were the only ones in it, but there wasn’t time for Caustus to do more than get started dry-humping her through his pants and the frills of her dress. As her body pretended to appreciate the attention, she inspected the small, slim, greasy production manager.
Pathetic, she thought, but she imagined this thing as viewed by one of his terrified prey – some young girls, maybe streetganger babies or raff children, bought and sold and never to come out of this monster’s bedroom…
He kissed up at her and she was starting to kiss back when the doors opened on the ninth floor. 9D was the room she’d rented for the next twelve hours…
* * *
It had cost her two hundred dollars, but Room 9D itself was nothing remarkable: a plain queen-sized bed was about the only furniture. A doorway led off to a simple bathroom – no windows, she observed as the drooling, rock-hard Caustus shoved her toward the bed. The door clicked shut behind them.
She’d undone the man’s designer necktie a few minutes earlier while making out with him, and now she took hold of it, yanking it off his neck. He roughly started to turn her over, his fly undone and his cock out, and—
Nope, no more of that, she thought as she brought a foot around his ankles, straightening up as she knocked him to the floor. She took hold of his arm as he struggled, descending to jab him sharply in the kidney with a knee as the shocked man struggled. Then her weight was on him, his arm twisted behind his back, and his mouth just now starting to splutter…
With her free hand she took the back of Caustus’ head and slammed his face onto the thinly-carpeted floor.
“Shut the fuck up, asshole,” she hissed. “You nod your head to say yes, you shake it to say no. I’m here to kill you, but if you do as you’re told you might live. You want to live, Johnny Caustus?”
Her hand was spread apart on the back of his head, ready to slam his face into the ground again if he started to say something. He didn’t. He nodded, carefully, three times.
“You get a good look at my face, Johnny?” she asked quietly.
The underboss – the production manager, apparently – carefully moved his face from side to side.
“Good answer,” she said. “Now give me your other hand.”
With the necktie she bound his wrists together behind his back, using tight knots that would only get tighter if he struggled against them. Then, a close eye on the bound paedophile, she reached up to the bed and took a pillow, yanking the case off and ripping the pillowcase along its length. She shoved that into the man’s mouth, tying it behind his head to gag him.
She took Caustus’ belt off, reaching past the open fly to grab the buckle and whisk it off. A minute later his ankles were roughly tied together as well, the belt threaded past his wrists to hogtie him by all fours, face-down on the floor.
“Mrph murgle,” said Caustus through the gag irritably.
Diana Angela sat down on the bed and removed her heels. Then she kneeled above Caustus, taking one of the shoes in the palm of her hand and placing its small point against Caustus’ right eyeball. Testing, feeling the pressure.
“This is how you might die, Johnny Caustus,” she said in a low hiss. “It’ll pop your eyeball first but don’t worry, the pain won’t last more than a bit of a second until the tip pierces your brain. Do you want to die like that, Johnny Caustus?”
You paedophile piece of shit. She often hoped, when making kills like this, that the people she was avenging would somehow know that they had been remembered. That they would appreciate knowing that she’d taunted them, that their murderers’ last minutes had been terror and false hope of their own…
Caustus slowly shook his head.
Tough shit, you’re going to anyway. Just not yet.
“I am going to take the gag off, Johnny Caustus. If you shout for help, I am going to drive this heel into your eye and pop it. Do you want me to do that?”
He moved his head sideways twice, with measure and control. The underboss had taken ownership of the situation in his mind, that precision implied. He was aware of what was going on and wheels were turning in his head as to how he might get out of it, as to how he might survive.
“You probably want to say you’ll pay me triple or something,” she continued in a cold, low tone. “We might talk about that later, but not now. Do you understand that?”
There were two more careful up-and-down motions of his head.
Jamie, Nareendra, Glennis, she thought, and the one whose name I do not know… I
hope you guys are watching the monster who ended your lives lying tied-up and shit-scared right now.
“You will answer my questions, or I will hurt you. If you answer them correctly, I might consider my purpose here served and leave,” she told him. “Otherwise, I get to kill you.”
She lowered the shoe from his eye socket and pulled the gag down from his mouth, roughly forcing it around his neck. For a moment Caustus just breathed silently, then he turned to look up at her – and caught himself, arrested his movement and focused squarely on the floor.
Oh yes, this was a smart one. Smart and self-controlled and she’d have to make sure he didn’t have an angle of some kind…
“I can tell you – everything you need to know,” Caustus said. “Production figures – what did they say to get from me?”
“Tell me the names of the children,” said Diana Angela coldly.
Caustus froze.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Diana placed the point of the heel against his eye again, as she kneeled astride his back.
“OK,” she shrugged. “Let’s see how much pressure this takes…”
“No! I’ll tell you. There was… they were all raff brats. No more than raff brats. Orphans mostly, they had miserable lives…”
“No more than raff brats,” Diana Angela said, her voice ice. “Tell me more about how they were only raff brats, you piece of shit!” She kept herself under control but she wanted to drive that heel into his eye, far enough to pop the eye but not into the brainstem… then repeat it with his other eye, and…
“Say their fucking names,” she spat. “Say their fucking names!”
“I…” Caustus stopped himself. After a second, she jabbed him in the kidney with her knee to remind him to continue. He didn’t.
“You were going to tell me that you didn’t even know their names,” she said. Very slow, very controlled, a twitch away from ramming that heel through his eye socket into his brainpan like she wanted to… “Right?”
Caustus gave a careful, measured nod.
“Their names included Jamie, Nareendra, and Glennis,” she told him. “Say those names.”
“Ja-amie,” said Caustus carefully. “Nareendra. Glennis. Look, I can give you an Exchange code for fifty grand, I’m the production manager, I’m worth more to you alive than…”
She wasn’t into too much pain for its own sake, although she’d once kept a promise to a man by strangling him with his own rapey cock. She’d tormented Caustus enough, he knew why he was going to die, that was enough.
“Shut the fuck up,” she said as the man gibbered. “You want to live, say those names again. And say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry, Jamie,” said Caustus carefully. “I’m sorry, Nareendra. I’m sorry, Glennis. Would you like me to apologize again?”
Diana Angela thought for a moment, then shrugged.
“Nah, not really.”
She was silent for a few moments, enjoying his life in – literally – the palm of her hand. Her muscles were tense and ready to drive the heel-point into his brain. Maybe his last words would be something interesting…
“Look,” Caustus said, “we can work something out. I’ll make it worth your while, I’ll outbid them—”
Nah, not remotely interesting. It wasn’t like she could spend the money upstairs, after all.
She slammed his face down onto the floor and the shoe on it, driving its heel through his right eye and into his brain. He seized up as if electrocuted, a gush of blood coming from his mouth, and then slumped limp.
She got up, breathing hard but grinning. One more paedophile in hell, and now it was time for her to get out of here. Back to the Last Stand, she licked her lips, to collect the bounty and pick up some fun… because fuck you, you paedophile sack of shit!
Before she left she checked his pulse, making absolutely sure he was dead and not somehow shamming. Then she replaced the heels, checked her dress, straightened herself a little, and was about to head out when a knocking came at the door.
“Mr. Caustus, just a sec,” came a voice. “The boss wants them data sticks you got.”
Shit, shit. Her heart beat in her throat as she worked through options, then stepped carefully toward the door.
“We’re done anyway for now,” she said brightly, praying to God that there would be only one and not two of them…
“Come right in!”
She opened the door and stepped past the liveried tenement guard as he came in---
With her right elbow she hooked the man around the throat and slammed him into the wall. She kneed him viciously in the groin from behind and pounded his face into the wall again as he recoiled. She wasn’t going to kill this grunt if she could avoid it, but she had to neutralize him…
And that meant, she realized as the messenger fell limp at her feet, that this guy would be expected back in a minute or two. She had… about that long to get out of the club entirely.
Ninth floor. She had to get down from the ninth floor fast, before a pursuit started. She wasn’t going to be able to bluff her way through the Hux in that time, so… stealth wasn’t an option. She took the heels off again, poised on tiptoe, thinking through the known layout of this building and where it stood in relation to its neighbours…
Pieces clicked together to form a plan in her mind. Yes…
She braced herself to move, rehearsing the direction she’d take: through the lobby, past the elevators to the stairwell on what would be the north side of the building. This building’s northern neighbour was shorter, but only by a couple of stories… yes…
She threw the door open and froze. In the hallway immediately outside were a pair of maids, one of them talking into a radio mouthpiece on her shoulder. They’d seen everything. The hue and cry was already on.
Heart in her throat she sprinted through the corridor, knocking down a man who stumbled in front of her. She was unarmed, she needed to do something about that, but for now she just needed to move!
Behind her, she saw the maids head into her room, where in seconds they would discover the dead Johnny Caustus and the moaning messenger… but she couldn’t bring herself to hurt service workers. Most tenement guards of the inner circle were thuggish bullies, but the raff were the ones they oppressed. She was never going to intentionally harm them… even if it killed her, which it would someday…
There was shouting behind her as the maids discovered the body. Then she was at the end of the corridor, turning…
It was an interior fire escape against a wall, with clear glass windows at every landing to look down upon the building’s neighbour, whose roof was two stories below and across an alley. The drainpipe she’d remembered, ran past the window just at its edge. But the window was solid glass, not the type that opened…
She picked up the fire extinguisher she’d seen a moment earlier, took it off its hook and slammed it through the window. Glass blasted outwards in an explosive hail, and she bashed at it on the edge by the drainpipe, straining herself because the fire extinguisher was heavy, but knocking out the bits of glass stuck in the window frame.
“Six, clear!” came a shout from below. Security teams reacting the way competent people did when executing a well-rehearsed clearance drill. Going face to face against an armed reaction team would be suicide, and that made this the safer of two dangerous options…
She reached through the window and pulled herself against the drainpipe. It started to give as soon as she put weight on it; she pressed her feet against the wall and pushed to help.
“Seven, clear! Nine, clear!” came from the teams as the drainpipe broke loose from the gutter above. Slowly, then faster, it fell away from the wall as she pushed with her feet, her fingers gripping the metal. The two-story, twenty-foot drop to the adjacent floor became fifteen, twelve, ten, and that was enough to drop onto the tar-covered rooftop, landing in an all-fours crouch and rising.
Now to…
From the window sh
e’d jumped from came shouts. A bullet ricocheted off a chimney stack five feet away; another one whisked past her as she started to run.
Down below, an alarm began to ring.
* * *
An external fire escape had taken her vaulting down to the street level, where she straightened herself up and began to turn south…
“That’s her! Stop her!” came a shout.
So much for going straight back to Cleopatra’s; a grin crossed her face, they were going to have to do this the hard way. Well, a girl couldn’t complain about a little bonus exercise, could she?
She sprinted west, toward the high-building country outside Midtown’s gates. These were blocks of buildings that had been abandoned but never continuously occupied, which meant that they’d become unoccupiable as generations of streetgangers ripped out the structural metals for their scrap value. They were home to trash-scavenging streetgangers, but—
She activated her implant as she ran through the security checkpoint, sidestepping a suspicious soldier who tried to block her. What had been near-complete darkness in the shadowed street of concrete shells, became an ambient morning light.
Thermal, she told it as she ran into the darkness, slowing to crouch in a doorway once she was a secure hundred yards in. There were streetgangers around, so they won’t going to chase her that far… and she herself wanted to know where those streetgangers were!
The implant displayed body heat as she scanned around. The biggest immediate threat were the crowd of tenement people, Hux security and a growing crowd of others, gathering at the gate she’d fled from.
Staying in the shadows of the buildings, looking for sharp rubble or glass before she stepped, she began to move further west along the street. She was unwilling to enter the buildings; streetgangers could be territorial and they were known for coming up with all kinds of booby-traps. But she had to make distance along the street, before she could circle back…
There were streetgangers around, too – there was a group of thermally identified humans in one of the upstairs windows across the street. They could tell there was a commotion, but thank God the tennies were afraid of the dark—