"'Course not." I put my all into a scoff, really heaving it from the chest to communicate my derision. "Sometimes we utilise physical violence and get satisfaction that way."
"Meh." Leo shrugs, his lips spreading out into a jaunty smile. He spares me a quick glance. "You know I like a bit of bureaucratical inconvenience with my triumphs over evil."
"Yes, yes, the infamous rich-boy mentality," I mock, glowering out at the series of shadowy buildings we pass as Leo drives on through the night. "Why get your hands dirty when you can beat people into submission via the biased judicial system your ancestors helped to create?"
Leo appears positively delighted by this. "Ohh, look who's been reading theGuardianwith his cornflakes." He tilts his head, considering. "Are assassins considered blue-collar workers?"
"Being an assassin is a very hands-on job," I respond dryly. "Lots of manual labour involved with killing peoplein person."
"Have you got a union?" Leo asks, voice droll.
I make an incredulous noise. "Who the fuck joins a union anymore?"
Leo gives a short nod. "Fair point."
"I just think we should be taking on OI from an underdog perspective. They're a corporation," I reason. "They are The Man. And I think we should be using more Molotov cocktails in our war against them. For appearance's sake if nothing else."
Leo seems to consider this for a handful of seconds before venturing, "Since we’re government agents, are we not also considered part of The Man?"
I make a low humming sound, pretending to think about it, then offer, "Only if you care about things like the truth and have no appreciation for irony."
"Fuck that!" Leo exclaims, bashing his hand against the steering wheel. "The truth never did anything for me, and irony is my son. I am now convinced by your argument." He shoots another look at me, adding with fierce sarcasm, "For the sake of the working man, we'll ask Senior Agent North to let us firebomb the OI facility."
"Ask? Why?" I imagine asking North to commit arson. It might be worth it just to see his jaw twitch in that way it does when Leo and I do something to genuinely upset him. "You know he'll just scowl at us and do that selective-hearing bullshit he does, where he pretends we didn't just say the insane thing."
"Exactly." Leo's eyes spark with enthusiasm. "If we tell him about it and he doesn't expressly tell us not to do it, that counts as permission."
I squint at him. "In what world?"
"In the fictional world where we'd have time to get back and firebomb the facility before OI has cleared out," Leo answers wryly.
I make a shocked sound and grab at my chest. "Wow, reality, way to crush my dreams."
Leo lets out an extended sigh. "There really is no such thing as fairy-tale happy endings that involve gratuitous use of Molotov cocktails."
"Life," I curse, shaking my fist in mock anger, "you disappointing bitch."
Leo pulls into a parking garage, which sits beside the safe house FISA designated to us for this mission. It's a small space our van barely fits into and requires us to climb out through the back doors.
I take the lead, getting out of my seat and going to open the doors, checking the surrounding area, my superior Liquid Onyx eyesight allowing me to scan darkness more thoroughly than Leo can. Seeing no possible threats or issues from surrounding neighbours, few as there are on a street like this, I beckon for Leo to vacate the van after me.
Leo and I go around the side of our safe house to enter through the back door. As soon as we moved in a few days ago, I wired the front door so anything trying to break in that way would get a nasty surprise. Leo didn't think it was necessary, rationalising that if anyone were going to break in, it would be a homeless person or some kids, not Obsidian Inc. agents and the like. Our safe house is little more than a derelict building, made up of old stone and held together by eroding cement and hostile obstinance.
Despite genuinely believing this, he didn't stop me. He knows by now I err on the side of super-fucking paranoid. I wanted to wire the back door as well, but Leo convinced me to settle for putting alarms on the windows. If anyone tries to get in through them, we'll be alerted to it immediately.
The interior of our safe house is equally as bland and crumbling as the outside, containing two bedrooms upstairs and an open plan downstairs. Every wall is painted an unflattering dark yellow, and the flooring has been stripped back to reveal lumpy stone.
There's a table set up in the otherwise-empty would-be living room, with a computer and a couple of monitors. Most of them are used for security, linked to the camera we have positioned outside the property. Another was set up for surveillance purposes, the camera itself placed inside a streetlight near the OI facility from which Leo and I just escaped.
Senior Agent North is waiting for us inside the safe house. He's sitting on a suspiciously frail chair in front of the monitors, posture deceptively relaxed. He's dressed all in black, and there's a Glock strapped to his side.
North turns to face us when we come in through the back door, his expression decidedly grim. It's been that way ever since Rohan was taken by OI, and we found out what happened to the dead scientist, Ryan Rush.
Our medical team did their thing and confirmed that Rush committed suicide via cyanide. He had one of his molars replaced with a cyanide capsule inside a plastic fake tooth. All he would have needed to do was break the plastic and swallow. He'd have been dead within minutes.
After some digging, we found Rush was paranoid about OI, or someone similar, coming after him for his research, and he wanted to be prepared to off himself in the name of protecting the secrets locked inside his head.
I had to give it to Rush: at least he wasn't an idiot. He knew it was better to die on his terms than to let OI throw him around like a dog toy for months before they terminated him. I can appreciate the forethought and practicality that went into his planned-contingency suicide.
