The empty terminal was disturbing in its bland pleasantness. An Italian cover of “Goodnight Eileen” was playing in the background. Much to my amusement, I saw my metal briefcase come through the luggage belt and picked it up. I half expected it to blow up in my face in the same way I’d disabled the Zombie. Thankfully, it seemed like they were buying my cover story. Heading to the front entrance, I saw Lucita through the glass doors. She was standing in front of a Ferrari 488 that matched her dress. I wasn’t a big fan of sports cars, but F was, which meant I’d have to fake enthusiasm.

Instead, stepping through the automatic doors, I said, “Is everything you own yellow?”

“You have a problem with yellow? The Chinese used it as the color of Emperors.”

“Just wondering if it was a theme of yours or not.”

“Biondi means ‘fair-haired’ in Italian.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding. “It must be a hassle keeping your hair that color.”

Lucita narrowed her eyes, then gave a half-smile. “It was, but the Shell’s exterior grows whatever color hair I want it to.”

“How is life as a cyborg?”

Lucita paused, seemingly surprised by my candor. “It has its ups and downs. Everything feels real. I can eat, sweat, make love, and see all as before. Better, even. However, other things are slightly off. Then there’s the fact that I scan everything so I know you’ve been shot twice and recently had brain surgery.”

“I needed to disable my IRD implant before I left,” I said. “Not that I’d call it brain surgery.”

“Did you kill the doctor after you had him do it?”

“No.”

“You should have,” Lucita said, shaking her head. She then walked over to the driver’s seat and slid on in. She popped the trunk of the car and I placed my luggage in the back, doing my best to take her measure.

Try as I might, I couldn’t help but feel some sense of attraction to her. As conventionally beautiful as she was, there was quite a bit that reminded me of S. I wasn’t in the position to judge her morality either, as much as I wanted to. We were both killers of innocent people and assassins for hire. Still, she was a target, and I was the one contracted to kill her. I might have to charm her to get close to her father, but I needed to avoid getting attached.

God, being a Letter was fucked up.

Stepping into the passenger’s side of the car and buckling my seatbelt, I said, “I try not to kill people who might be useful later. I kill the people I’m paid to kill and no one else.”

“And you think that makes you moral?” Lucita didn’t bother to buckle her seatbelt, instead just starting the car and pulling out at a high rate of speed.

“No. I’ve long since abandoned any pretense of that. It’s the way I like to do business, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Hmm.”

Lucita sped across the countryside, passing quaint little roadside villages and farms at close to a hundred miles per hour. She was heedless of the danger to herself because, well, there wasn’t any danger. As a Shell, almost anything that happened to her would do minimal damage to her body. In some ways I envied her; in others I pitied her. I suspected her dissonance with regular humanity was far greater than she let on.

“So, tell me,” I said, acting nonchalant at our speed. “How much of that rebellious daughter, overprotective father stuff back there was true?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Please, you couldn’t have been more stereotypical if you’d offered me pasta while wearing rosaries.”

Lucita laughed. “Father is an atheist, but I suppose you’re right. Some stereotypes are rooted in reality, though. He gave me orders to seduce you in order to find out your true feelings regarding the Carnevale.”

I paused. “Rather cold of him.”

Lucita looked over. “Yes, especially since he had Gillespie killed.”

Interesting. “You think he’s responsible for your lover’s death?”

“It’s not the first time. Gillespie was good, but my father is jealous of all my lovers.”

Ugh. “I see.”

“Thankfully, it’s not what you’re thinking. He wishes to be worshiped by his children and regrets whenever we don’t treat him like a god. Papa wanted a large family but mother proved unable to conceive another child, and so he killed her. Alonzo is his only other bastard as many times as he’s tried.”

“And both of you Shells.”

“A form of revenge on him. Not that he isn’t already looking for the next fourteen-year-old girl from the village to try and impregnate.”

I had a good idea why the Caesar was prone to killing his mistresses now. He probably had a low sperm count and was blaming them for being unable to give him an heir.

I didn’t have to fake my disgusted look. “Charming.”

“Isn’t it?” Lucita smiled. “You’re not like the other psychopaths my father recruits.”

“I could just be faking.”

“Perhaps. I have a good eye, though. I can usually tell the difference.”

“Those who kill for fun and those who kill for profit?”

“Indeed.” Lucita’s smile became enigmatic. “So what do you really hope to get out of this?”

“Hoping to skip past the seduction?”

Lucita frowned.

“Sorry,” I said, sighing. “I forgot about your boyfriend.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Gillespie was a convenience, nothing more. You can imagine how tiresome it gets, however, when every assassin thinks he’s a ladies’ man.”

“Ah.”

“What about you?”

“Letters aren’t allowed to have relationships. The only exceptions are cover identities, and those can be dissolved at any time. Our purpose is to be killers with no ties to countries, religions, ideologies, or families. We kill because we’re ordered to and because we hope for an eventual possibility of something else.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“It is. Sex without any emotional connection is an empty pleasure.”

“You’re a romantic.”

“Not really. I kill because the Society orders me to.” I paused. “Or did, at least.”

“I always wondered what motivated you Letters to serve your masters. Is it truly so effective, holding your memories over you?”

I paused, thinking about how F would answer. In the end, I had very little insight into what had driven him from the Society and instead told the truth about myself. “For some Letters? Yes. For others? No. People kill for five reasons: belief, money, power, sex, and survival. I can’t help but think removing those just makes the majority of Letters ambivalent to their employers at best. I think blackmailing with memories only works when the Letters hate what they do on some level.”

“And do you? Hate yourself, I mean.”

“Sometimes.”

Lucita cocked her head to one side, not paying attention to the road but still making a tight turn. She was either an extraordinary driver or possessed enhanced reflexes and perception as a Shell. Perhaps both. “That I understand. I’m afraid you will find the Carnevale isn’t much of an improvement on the Society in that respect. This is a dirty business, and we do not fight for any reason other than power and gain. My father is a superstitious man, but he is driven only by his own ego.”

“Power and gain aren’t bad motivation. You might also give back my memories. Likewise, at least I’ll be the one choosing to pull the trigger now. I never had that choice with my previous masters.” That was a lie. There was always a choice—maybe not a good one, but a choice nevertheless.

“Hmm.” Lucita made an impossibly smooth sharp right turn along a mountain cliff. “Tell me, what will you do when you have your memories back?”

“I have no idea. I won’t be the same person.”

“So it’s all an elaborate form of suicide?”

I hadn’t thought about it. “What about you? What do you get from the Carnevale?”

“Rulership.”

“Ah. Will Daddy pass it down to you?”

“Not voluntarily.”

That was an interesting conundrum. “So you intend to seize it?”

“Not violently. Instead, I intend to take the Carnevale one assassin at a time. My father hopes to pass us to Alonzo until his latest bastard grows up. I’m working to make sure when—God forbid—my father passes that Alonzo won’t just seize power permanently. It runs into issues because many of the aforementioned ladies’ men have expectations on what I should provide in exchange for their support.” Lucita wrinkled her nose in such a way as to make it clear exactly what she meant.

“Their masculine pride wounded by the thought of a female leader?”

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s been getting better in recent years, but Italian men are still threatened by the thought of being ordered around by any woman other than their mothers. The operatives recruited from Africa and South America are every bit as bad, if not worse. Rosario’s death didn’t help. She was a good friend and a powerful ally.”

She referred to the Yellow Spider. “I’m sorry.”

“I hope you killed this Agent G slowly.”

Lucita clearly thought I’d killed her rather than S. I wasn’t about to correct her. That might raise uncomfortable questions and put her on a path to revenge against someone I cared about. “G is gone, that’s all I can say.”

She nodded. “So tell me, if you’re not a fake defector, then what would you want for your support?”

That was to the point. “I could answer you money, sex, or position, but I had all those in the Society. I’m also going to get my memories from your father. So, instead, I’ll give you another answer: stability.”

“Stability?”

“A war with the Society won’t benefit anyone.”

“They will not be a problem soon.”

“Oh?” I asked.

She smiled. “I’ll tell you after you’ve proven yourself.”

Realizing I wasn’t going to be getting anything more out of her, I decided to chat about other things. The pleasant conversation lasted for about ten minutes before I got a piercing headache followed by a noise akin to the way dial-up internet sounded in the Nineties.

“G, are you there?” Marissa’s voice spoke in my head. Her image appeared in front of me akin to when I was hooked up with an information jack. Marissa was once more dressed in her accountant-like attire from the plane and sitting behind a desk with an earpiece in front of what I assumed to be a video-conference-capable computer screen. “Are you picking up our wireless communication?”

I had some experience with this sort of conversation, so I said back without speaking, “This is not the best time.”

“We’ve got you tracked on our satellite network. You’re moving at a high rate of speed. Which of course you know. Never mind. Persephone wants an update on the situation.”

“Is something wrong?” Lucita asked, glancing over at me. “You look like you just ate something horrible.”

“It’s nothing. Just a headache.”

“Am I going too fast?” Lucita grinned.

“Only if we hit something.”

“Yes, that would be very bad.” Lucita chuckled, speeding up to two hundred miles per hour. “For you.”

I chuckled back, unafraid of dying in a car crash.

God wouldn’t be so merciful.

Marissa could apparently hear Lucita despite existing only in my head. “Ah, so the sexbot is in the car with you.”

“Jealous?”

Marissa responded automatically with a blank expression on her face. “No. I know I have to share you as part of the mission.”

The phrase was spoken without a hint of irony or deception, which made me think of Gerard’s words. That Marissa wasn’t in our relationship of her own free will. I pushed those thoughts from my mind. “No, you… listen, I’ve made contact with the Carnevale and my cover identity is presently holding. They want me to kill an Italian politician, though, Luigi Mondo. I need further instructions on what to do regarding that. Likewise, they have Doctor Gordon and have another mole in the Society. My cover may not hold much longer, so I’m going to try to accelerate my timespan for rescuing or eliminating Doctor Gordon.”

“You’re going to rescue him, right?”

Strange how she could be the International Refugee Society’s cheerleader and its conscience at once. “Yes. I will do everything in my power to see him home safely.”

A part of me knew, though, how much damage Black Technology could do in the hands of these lunatics. The creature they’d created was determined to finish the mission no matter what, and I was prepared to kill Doctor Gordon if I couldn’t extract him.

God help me.

Marissa typed into her computer, and after a few seconds said, “You’re cleared for killing Mondo.”

“What?” I almost said aloud.

“That’s all Persephone said. Apparently, he’s not on the restricted list of targets. He’s some kind of high-up pro-European Union bigwig, but not so important our clients want to see him protected. In fact, there are a lot of red flags and confidential notices in his files that make me think he’s probably dirty.”

That was a small comfort, since all politicians were dirty but very few of them deserved to die for it. In fact, it tended to be the clean ones people wanted to off the most. The reformers, the populists, and the ideologues.

“We can stop for aspirin if you like,” Lucita said.

“That’d be nice, actually. Long plane ride.”

“Ha!” Lucita said. “International assassin and you suffer jet lag?”

“What can I say?” I gave a half-hearted shrug. “Dig up everything you can for me on this guy and deliver it to my IRD. Also, do we have any contractors in the area? Real scumbags who wouldn’t mind taking a shot at the Carnevale?”

“There are a few possible candidates. How quick do you want it?”

“Within the hour.”

“That’ll be difficult.”

“Make it worth their while.”

“Do you want to take out Lucita now?”

I barely avoided shaking my head. I wasn’t used to this cybernetic-telepathy or whatever the lab-boys were calling it. “No, quite the opposite. Give them these instructions.”

I explained to her in exacting detail as Lucita slowed her car down and pulled into a small town with a franchise gas station I didn’t recognize. I had Marissa send me the GPS for the fastest route to Luigi’s country estate from our position and told her where I wanted the thugs to make their move.

“I’ll do it, but I don’t understand,” Marissa said.

“Divide and conquer,” I muttered. “That’s all you need to know.”

“Hmm?” Lucita said.

I smiled. “Just how I think the Society is best dealt with.”

“I agree,” Lucita said. “Perhaps we can discuss them more.”

“Of course.”