It was pandemonium outside of Luigi Mondo’s office as gunfire was being exchanged between cyborgs, the J5R mercenaries, and the bodyguards of the various VIPs. There were numerous bodies spread out on the ground floor below, mostly servants, and the chandelier had fallen to the ground in front of the main entrance. The cyborgs had hidden amongst the cleaning staff and were firing wildly into the ranks of both guest and soldier, seemingly immune to bullets.

The Smiling Killer’s fighters were mostly Italian and South American men, but there was a single woman in a French maid’s uniform who didn’t use guns but moved with inhuman speed, slashing throats and stabbing people like a demented cartoon character. The fundraiser was rapidly turning into a bloodbath. I suddenly regretted ever coming on this mission.

“This is your idea of a distraction?” I asked, stealing the sidearm of the fallen J5R soldier behind us.

“It’s working, isn’t it?” Lucita said, laughingly opening fire into a cyborg running up the staircase. It fell backwards, only to bring its gun around, unaffected. That was when another shot of her gun went through the cyborg’s head, killing it instantly.

Checking the fallen soldier behind us in the doorway again, I grabbed his earpiece and pulled the dog tags from around his neck. “This is J5R-053-D7. Headshots only. Repeat, headshots only. That’s the only thing affecting their armor.”

“John, what’s the situation with the priority target?”

I faked a scream then threw the walkie-talkie on the ground before shooting it.

“That’s not going to help them much,” Lucita said, shooting a J5R soldier coming around the other side of the hallway.

“It might help them some, and why are you shooting them?!”

“You need a better gun!”

I shook my head and crouched down, grabbing the Oppenheimer wielded by the fallen soldier and spotting a second staircase down at the other end of the hall. There was also a window, which offered a better means of escape than sitting here shooting at everyone who came close.

The door from the same room the soldier lying dead on the ground had come from opened. Another J5R soldier almost crashed into me before looking down and seeing his dead associate beside me. Not taking any chances, I smashed him in the chin with the butt of my gun before firing a bullet into his forehead.

Looking into the room, I saw it was full of security monitors, and there was a small armory on the side of the wall. It was a shame Luigi hadn’t had his office equipped with one, but given the amount of dirty business he did, it was probably better he hadn’t.

Knowing we’d probably been spotted by any number of cameras and not wanting the truth of this sordid affair, I took a brief look at the monitors, memorized the cyborgs’ present locations, then hurled my pen grenade into the room. It would destroy any evidence of mine or Lucita’s premise and leave my sterling reputation intact.

Standing to the side of the door as the explosion laid waste to all of the computers and weaponry with, Lucita fired her gun down the hall, pinning down a group of J5R soldiers while I stood behind her. In that moment, I had a perfect opportunity to put my gun up to the back of her head and pull the trigger.

There was no further need for Ms. Biondi. She’d successfully made a mortal enemy of the Italian government. Even if there was no physical evidence, the Smiling Killer was such a recognizable figure that any of the witnesses who survived would be able to identify him. The fact he’d called all of his friends in Parliament and the Army beforehand also would put a giant bullseye on the organization. Combine that with the civil war I’d instigated with her people, and there was no reason to keep the psychopathic signorina alive.

Goodbye, Lucita.

“Lucita! Time to die!” A deep baritone voice shouted behind us.

Spinning around, I opened fire with the Oppenheimer upon a balding black man with half his face blasted off to reveal shining metal beneath. He was wearing shredded waiter’s attire and holding a .50 Anti-Material Rifle (AMR) with one hand. I didn’t recognize the make or model, which pointed to it being a custom job, but it was the sort of weapon a person used to shoot at helicopters and jeeps.

In other words, an anti-Shell weapon.

The bullets from my rifle bounced against his armored endo-skeleton, causing the assassin to laugh at me, but I hadn’t been aiming at him. When he fired the rifle, nothing happened since I’d shot it full of holes. That was when Lucita turned around with her gun, flicked on the laser sight, and reduced his head to a bloody mess.

Lucita looked at me in surprise. “That is the second time you’ve saved my life today, Frank.”

“I—”

I was interrupted by Lucita giving me a swift kiss on the lips before charging down the stairs toward the floor below.

The staircase led to the kitchen, where a dozen or so guests were surrounded by even more gun-toting mercenaries. There were a couple of dead cyborgs on the stairwell leading up, which showed my advice had managed to achieve some results—and left me feeling less than pleased when the mercs all turned their weapons on me.

I raised my gun in the air and lied worse than I had ever lied before. “We’re the good guys.”

Lucita, who I fully expected would have killed everyone down there, reluctantly followed my lead and held her gun in the air, too.

Luigi’s wife, Maria, was among the survivors with her daughter. “Where is my husband!?”

“He’s upstairs in the panic room,” I lied, shaking my head. “Your people gave us these guns from the armory.”

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One of the mercenaries, a short-haired woman in her thirties dressed in a suit, asked. “Why would they do that?”

“We’re AISI,” Lucita said, mentioning the Italian intelligence service. “The password is Falcon Rising.”

“We came here to warn your husband,” I added, backing up her story.

“Clearly, you didn’t get here fast enough,” Maria hissed.

The woman in her thirties, presumably the J5R team’s leader, gestured to two of her men. “Go check on Luigi Mondo. We need to wait for backup. The hostiles are in retreat but—”

“They’re monsters. Did you see what they did?” said one of the two mercenaries, a man in his late twenties. “What the hell are they?”

“It’s classified,” I said, staring at them. “Experimental, top secret. Luigi knew what it was about.”

“My husband is the Minister of Economic Development!” Maria said, understandably panicked. “What does he know about fucking robots!?”

“More than you’d think,” I said, trying to figure out how to salvage this situation. Telling them Luigi was still alive bought us time, but not nearly enough if they found his dead body upstairs with a broken neck. The problem was we needed to get out of this situation without being detained, and a few dozen dead bodies weren’t conducive to that. I worried about Lucita disagreeing as she looked like she was ready to kill the entire party for the thrill of it. Turning to the others, I said, “You need to escort Mrs. Mondo and her daughter off the property immediately, along with the rest of the guests. The terrorists are after them. You need to do this now, as they’re going to start taking hostages to get them out. The military is going to be arriving any minute now to back this up, but their safety is the priority.”

“What about us!” another guest said.

“They’ll take care of it. Do it now,” I said to the leader. “You have a responsibility to your clients over everyone else.”

“What about my husband?” Maria said.

“John’s with him,” I said, remembering what they said on the walkie talkie.

I could see the wheels turning in her head. The mercenary leader looked up to the top of the stairs where her men were heading up and said, “Come down here, escort the hostages away. Our responsibility is them above everyone else. You two, you’re coming with us.”

“No,” I said, projecting authority. “We’re dealing with a larger issue here. I’m sorry.”

Another round of gunfire was heard in the next room. Taking my gun down, I immediately went through the door to the next room in its general direction, where Lucita headed. Amazingly, the mercenaries didn’t stop us, and seeing a set of open doors leading to the side of the mansion, I ran through them with Lucita following.

The doors led to the driveway, which was jam packed with cars belonging to the rich and famous as well as a straight beeline to the exit from the estate. There was no sign of the Smiling Killer or his men.

We were out.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Lucita said, shaking her head. “I was afraid we would have to kill everyone there.”

“Disappointed?”

Lucita grabbed me as we reached the car we’d driven in. “I’m not a monster.”

I looked at her. “No one said you were.”

I wasn’t so sure, in truth. After all, she was like me, and I’d done terrible things tonight. I stepped into the driver’s seat as Lucita slipped into the passenger’s side. I started the vehicle and pulled out onto the road leading away from the mansion. It was dark and silent; giving me hope we could get away from this nightmare before things really went to hell.

“We need to regroup with my people,” Lucita said, pulling out her cellphone. “If my father knows the truth, we have to warn—”

That was when the cyborg assassin dressed as a French Maid ran out in front of the car and proceeded to grab its front end, digging her heels into the pavement and causing it to crash into her rather than knock her out of the way. Both Lucita and I slammed forward, our bodies blocked from smashing into the dashboard only by our seat belts. The assassin then slammed her fist into the front hood of the car, destroying the engine.

“Holy shit,” I said, staring at the sight before making a grab for my Oppenheimer. Lucita had already lifted hers and was aiming it.

Right then, the assassin flipped our car one hundred and eighty degrees, smashing it on its roof.

I turned to Lucita, unbuckling myself. “Can you do that?”

“No!” Lucita shouted. “The Blood Queen is unique.”

“The Blood Queen, seriously?”

“Shut up!”

The Blood Queen walked over to my side of the car, ripped off the door and proceeded to grab me. I attempted to fire my Oppenheimer into her face, only for her to knock it out of my hands and hurl me twenty feet through the air. I slammed against a grassy hill on the side of the road, bouncing against the dirt and rolling. The superhuman killer went over to Lucita’s side, smashing apart her gun with her fist before starting to engage in a fist fight.

“I really, really hate this mission,” I muttered, pulling out my sidearm and aiming it at the Blood Queen’s head.

I didn’t have a clear shot since Lucita and she were both moving so fast. Lucita managed to hit her several times, but took a kick to the stomach that I suspected would kill a normal woman. The Blood Queen promptly lifted her over her head and looked ready to smash her on the ground.

That allowed me to put two bullets through her eyes.

The Blood Queen, miraculously, didn’t die, but fell backwards and dropped Lucita. The assassin moved her hands to her damaged, sparking eye wounds. My gun’s caliber wasn’t strong enough to penetrate her skull, it seemed, so I ran to my Oppenheimer on the ground, pulled it up, and finished off the cybernetic killer. She was almost decapitated by the amount of fire I poured into her at close range.

“That’s three,” I said down to Lucita, offering my hand to her.

Lucita got up on her own. “I had her.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s over, Lucita!” the Smiling Killer’s voice spoke from behind us. “This little insurrection is at an end. You have been played.”

It was the same voice I’d heard on the phone with Marissa. Alonzo was choosing to speak in the same voice as a dead man. Yet another illusion to preserve the invincibility of a legend whose story was already over.

I spun around with my pistol to aim at the figure of the Smiling Killer. Alonzo was causally walking toward us, unsettling in how much he resembled the man I’d killed. His waiter’s uniform was utterly shredded, bullet marks all over his bare chest, and a few leaks of inky white substance in place of blood. The Smiling Killer’s Shell was damaged, but only superficially, having stood up to the damage inflicted by the mercenaries I’d sent after him. Aiming my gun, I pulled down the trigger and hit his neck and shoulders before the clip were expended.

Shit.

“I’m not a fool, Alonzo!” Lucita snapped back, stepping in front of me. “You tried to have me killed and end my threat! Well, fuck you! I am not going to be pushed aside for you because you just happen to be the son he wanted!”

The Smiling Killer shook his head, still stepping forward. “I could say you could have been that son, Lucita, but this isn’t the time nor the place. He’s not F, he’s an infiltrator from the Society. Probably G, the one who murdered Rosario.”

“Enough of your lies.”

The two cyborgs began fighting in front of me and I moved my hand down to the sidearm I’d pocketed from the dead mercenary upstairs. I’d developed a peculiar affection for Lucita, but that couldn’t be allowed to interfere with my mission.

That was when Lucita managed to twist the Smiling Killer’s head and ripped his head clean off his body. There was a geyser of white fluid from the Smiling Killer’s head and the body fell to the ground, Lucita hitting the ground seconds later. She was covered in the Shell’s remains and looked like she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done. I had a moment to kill her.

But I didn’t.

“Is it true?” Lucita asked.

I started to open my mouth but I didn’t get a chance to respond before I felt my entire body fill with a horrifying amount of electricity. Hitting the ground, I turned over to see a set of bolas wrap around her before electrocuting her as well.

That was when a black bag was put over my head.