Install buttspike.
Yanking my focus away from the internal introspection rabbit hole that thought brings about, I line the rifle up to the coordinates I measured over the course of the last few weeks. It’s imperative to test your equipment in as many conditions as possible.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being ill-prepared. After that mission three years ago, I’m rarely caught off guard.
Clearing my throat, I announce, “Okay, I’m going silent. Keep feeding me the info until the taps.”
“Got it.” The confirmation—a green light for full speed ahead.
Bore-sight the rifle—Zero the rifle.
The inherent complexity of human behavior, as it’s hardwired to our psyche over time, reminds me so much of the intersectionality of Western Individualism and Collectivism. As neither, even in their purist form, serves our global society because on both ends, narcissists thrive. Yet extremism is driving humanity into extinction.
You gotta admire how beautifully destructive our minds can become when survival is on the line. I sigh, wondering more often if we’re in a Greek tragedy or a third-act breakup. Actually, the more I think about it, we may just be in a miscommunication trope.
Steadying my breathing, I tap my earpiece, silently asking for anupdate.
Tonight’s target—a slumlord who nearly killed an entire apartment building with hundreds of people.
Sickened, my nostrils flare at the reminder of the death toll. Over three hundred people, many of them children, died from his murderous plot. He wanted to sell the building to a big developer, but he didn’t want to pay the tenants enough to lessen the burden of moving. Instead, he chose to release a nerve agent into the ventilation system.
My insides twist at the sight of their innocent faces. The youngest among them was a six-week-old baby. Flashes of my own tragedy blur my focus.
“He’s coming around the corner of Lavery Avenue and Kingston Street,” comes through my earpiece, jolting me from the feeling of loss threatening to take control.
I tap my comms in two consecutive beats.Ready.
A tall, conventionally attractive middle-aged man in a navy, pinstriped suit rounds the corner with a brunette-haired woman sluggishly in tow.
What a waste of a pretty face.
My own bias still paints this slimy loser into an image that matches his bootlickin’ soul.
Tap-tap-tap—target in sight.
Tap-tap… tap—he’s not alone. The slower cadence—a signal of how many people are in the mix.
Zooming in, I focus on the girl, and I do meangirl. She can’t be more than sixteen.
More people appear—too many more. And what was supposed to be a quick mission suddenly goes up in smoke.
“Abort.” The directive I expected rings in my ears.
I feel like I’m moving at warp speed as I’m disassembling my rifle. Everything carefully returned to its rightful place.
“Team three is on standby. Move your ass, Lyssa,” Raven instructs— her voice cool and calm, but stern. This mission is a bust, and the backup team is already being deployed.
Dressed, I place the contents in my go bag, zip it shut, and then send it down the ventilation shaft. It’ll be picked up by the time I make it to my bike.
I internallygroan, remembering I came in on my bike. It’s not that I can’t ride with heels and a dress—it’s that I don’t want to.
Huffing, I make peace with my current predicament, pressing the elevator to the basement level. No one gets on the entire billion levels I ride down. Grateful not to have to mask and smile.
My reprieve is short-lived when I stop at the spot my bike is supposed to be.
“What the fuck, Raven? Where’s my bike?” My jaw tightens to the point of pain. There are very few things in this life that I deem as mine and mine alone—my bat, Guilie, the death of my Mikah, and his fuckboy, incel friends, and my god damn bikes.
She doesn’t bother to tell me to calm down. “You’re being picked up. We had to move your bike when plans changed.”
