Walking down the halls of the meat processing plant’s back rooms, Marissa at my side, I passed several meat lockers and storage rooms. A quick look within told me why there were no workers here and the nature of the strange machinery in the central chamber—this was a place where the Carnivale disposed of their bodies.

There were a lot.

Businessmen, soldiers, women, and even the occasional child, who had been taken from their homes and then transported via the plant’s delivery trucks for processing. The bodies were hung up, fully clothed, on meat hooks for grinding and then canning. There were easier ways to get rid of bodies and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was just another reflection of the sick heart at the center of the Carnevale.

Having figured out which part of the plant Lucita was being tortured in, I took note of a fact as I maneuvered through the empty building: There were no screams. You wouldn’t think I would find that disturbing, but I did. Lucita was being flayed alive, tortured in one of the most inhuman ways possible.

Away from the noisy machinery of the central chamber, I should have been able to hear screams. The lack of them made me wonder if Lucita was dead or they’d simply turned off her ability to cry out in pain. The more I found out about Shells, the more horrifying they were. Either way, I was going to reach her soon and stop the torture.

I didn’t expect much resistance when I arrived. I’d killed all of the Caesar’s guards except the last two and once they were dead there would be nothing standing in the way of finishing my contract. Well, the Caesar part of it, at least. I couldn’t completely finish my contract without killing Lucita and there was no one to do it for anyway. If I was honest, I was going to kill the Caesar solely because I thought the world would be a better place without him, and I had the self-assurance to believe he was worse than me.

Even if that was a lie.

It would be evil versus evil when I finally put down Lucio. I’d tricked Lucita, a woman I’d slept with, into killing her own brother and assisting in a plan to assassinate her father. He was torturing his own daughter only because I’d put him in that position. I wanted this to be a moment of redemption, where I did a genuinely selfless act for the first time in my life, but the truth was I was fooling myself. There was no redemption here or even a lesser evil. Everywhere I looked, there was only black and more black.

One thing was for certain, though: I needed to do this.

“Did you see anything in the Memorize?” Marissa asked.

“You should know.”

“I didn’t upload those memories. I was just trying to remove your conditioning. It’s a long and involved process.”

“An onion.”

“What?”

“I saw an onion. Just another layer when I peeled off the first. Do you know anything about Daniel Gordon?”

“Only what’s in his file.”

“Was he a good man?”

Marissa paused. “No.”

“Thought not.”

“You don’t have to answer for Daniel’s sins.”

It was an odd thing to say.

The last flashback under the influence of the Memorize had left me more confused than ever. The black woman, who seemed familiar in a way I couldn’t quite place, had been trying to upload Daniel Gordon’s memories into my mind. Why would she need to do that if I was Daniel Gordon? Who was she to him? Was she my mother the way Marcus Gordon was my father? Was she the mysterious Rebecca? Or was I simply conjuring an elaborate story in my head the way an abandoned child might about their hypothetical parents?

I couldn’t say.

“Are you okay with this?” I decided to ask, reaching the final hallway to the place we needed to be. At the end of the hall was a plain white wooden door with a brass handle. Beyond was the location I’d seen on the monitors were Lucita was being tortured.

“Which part?” Marissa asked. “Rescuing Ms. Biondi or travelling with my ex-lover who possibly wants to kill me?”

“Rescuing Ms. Biondi.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

“Then I’m fine with it. What are you going to tell her when you speak with her?” Marissa asked. “You know, so she doesn’t shoot you in the face.”

“I didn’t say I’d say anything to prevent her from shooting me in the face.”

“Seriously.”

“The truth.”

Marissa scoffed. “That’s going to end well.”

“Probably not.” I shrugged. “Truth be told, I don’t intend to tell her anything. She already knows, or at least suspects. That’s assuming the Caesar hasn’t been taunting her about all of this, which is a very big if.”

“I see.”

I was silent. We reached the door at the end of the hallway.

“How did you break the conditioning?”

“I never was. Gerard was in on it from the beginning.”

That explained a lot. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel another stab of betrayal and now understood exactly why S had felt so passionate about F’s betrayal. Knowing Gerard had been walking beside me, planning and plotting with Marissa this entire time, left me wanting to put a bullet in the side of his head. The fact he was against my masters was immaterial. I didn’t feel any better about the organization than I did yesterday, but the simple fact was it had been against me. I had thought we were friends.

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It showed how much of a fool I was.

You don’t have friends in hell.

“I see,” I said, reaching for the doorknob. I was ready to kill some people. It was a disgusting, despicable thought, one which demeaned the profession of assassin, but I felt it nevertheless. I was angry and wanted to put a bullet in someone. It didn’t matter who.

Marissa grabbed my hand. “I promise you, after this mission is done, I will tell you everything.

“Why should I care what you have to say?” I said, my voice dripping with disdain. I had to put effort into it because if it reflected how I really felt, she’d know exactly how hurt I was by her actions. How much I still cared. I was no longer a badass killer—just another man made a fool of by his emotions. It was almost comic and made me want to lash out to recover some sort of dignity.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I listened.

Marissa looked up into my eyes and said, “You should listen to me because in order to lie to you about what happened between us, I had to believe. I had to convince myself. Every day of every week.”

“And?” I looked into her eyes and saw pain, which I didn’t think she could fake. Then again, I’d seen a lot of things I didn’t think she could fake, and it had all been lies—or had it?

Marissa looked away. “Sometimes, it left me confused.”

“Confused.”

Marissa looked back at me but didn’t meet my gaze. “You’re not someone I should like.”

“Neither are you.” But I do anyway.

I turned back to the door and proceeded to kick it open, ready to spray the guards inside with bullets. The results were not what I expected. The room chosen to be Lucita’s torture chamber was the plant motor pool with a singularly large garage door overlooking a dozen delivery trucks and the Caesar’s limousine.

A concrete platform with a walkway down the center and railing was present, covered in blood and white fluid with a meat hook conspicuously hanging down from the rafters above. Lucita was not hanging from it. Instead, the final two remaining guards were on the ground, broken in half, and there was no sign of her. The smell was terrible. Whatever the white fluid the cyborgs had inside them, it was even viler than the scent of the dead guards’ bowels emptying, as so many people’s did when they died.

“Huh,” Marissa said. “She’s not here.”

“No kidding, Captain Obvious.”

“I guess she’s the princess who saved herself.”

“Yeah,” I said, walking forward to look around. Before I could react, a golden-skinned arm reached around the other side of the doorway and grabbed the S515 machine gun in my hands.

“Fuck!” I shouted, trying to hold onto it but finding myself overpowered.

Pulling the gun forward from my grip, the S515 machine gun was hurled across the ground and sent spiraling over the edge of the platform. It came to a stop underneath the truck, right before a long muscular female leg kicked me in the chest and threw me back six feet on top of the platform’s center. It was like being hit in the chest by a car.

I landed between the dead guards, in the middle of the white fluid and blood, which soaked my pants. Climbing up to my feet, I saw Lucita standing on the other side of the door I’d kicked open.

Lucita had seen better days. The top layer of skin had been removed from patches across the right side of her face and arm, displaying the robotic circuitry and wiring underneath. The mixture of vat-grown blood, tissue, and muscle contrasted with the machinery replacements showed me a vision of the future that wasn’t entirely pleasant. Lucita’s dress was torn, with one half of it hanging under a bloody-bra-covered breast. There were signs of electrical burns and bruising as well. It made me wonder just how much pain she had to be in right now and what she was repressing to act.

“Hello, G,” Lucita said, looking ready to tear me apart.

Marissa aimed her gun at the cyborg, only for the Caesar’s daughter to dodge out of the way a split-second before the weapon went off. She grabbed Marissa before she could get another shot off and wrapped her in a chokehold. Marissa’s gun was taken in one easy motion and promptly aimed at me. Lucita kept Marissa in front of her, making it clear she could break her neck at any second. This had not gone like I’d hoped.

“You don’t need to do this,” I said, taking a step back.

“Don’t move a muscle,” Lucita said, trying to get a bead on my head with Marissa’s pistol. “I want this to be over quick.”

I moved a muscle, throwing myself over the platform’s side as a bullet whizzed past me. I rolled underneath the closest truck, grabbed my S515 machine gun, and emerged from the other side before taking position behind a wheel. I was well and truly sick of this sort of thing now, and not in the mood to get into another gunfight.

“I’ll pass,” I shouted over to her. “Maybe next week.”

“Come out or I’ll kill her!” Lucita shouted.

“Go ahead, she was my prisoner!” I shouted. “Just another tool against your father!”

“Fuck you, G!” Marissa shouted, either believing me or following my lead.

“You don’t arm prisoners,” Lucita responded. “Don’t try and bullshit me any further. You’re not leaving this garage alive.”

“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you we came here to rescue you.”

“Not in the slightest,” Lucita said, not killing Marissa just yet. I was surprised how the prospect of killing either caused me to feel sick. Lucita was my victim and Marissa was, betrayal notwithstanding, someone I wanted to see live. Fuck, emotions made assassination complicated.

“Well, it’s true,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I was sent here to kill your father, dismantle the Society, and rescue Doctor Gordon. I lied to you, manipulated you, and turned you against your family. The fact is, though, they were assholes and you were never anything other than a tool to them. You have a chance of walking out of this alive and free. I suggest you take it.”

“You’re just telling me I should fuck my family. Fuck my heritage. Fuck everything I’ve ever believed, and let you go?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Cash out. The game was rigged from the start.”

“You have five seconds until I break little Miss Goth Girl’s neck.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Five… four…”

I scooted to the edge of the truck and then tossed my machine gun over the side. “There, I’m unarmed.”

“That was incredibly stupid, G,” Marissa said.

“No shit,” I called back. “I’m making a lot of stupid decisions lately.”

“Come out,” Lucita said. “Slowly. No tricks, either.”

“I’m all out of plans.”

Truth be told, I had a plan, six of them in fact. They appeared in my mind like mathematical equations and gave me a perfect angle for dealing with Lucita. The problem was, every single one of them ended with killing her. I had to make a decision if I wanted to stick with this plan of mine, ill-conceived as it was. If I tried to talk her down, it would probably get Marissa killed and then me or vice-versa. I contemplated if I really cared whether I lived or died. In the end, I wanted to know who I was.

Throwing myself to where I’d deliberately thrown my machine gun, I grabbed it and aimed right at Lucita’s head. She moved to break Marissa’s neck, and the instinctual movement to get out of the way was enough for Marissa to slip down. I could have shot her in the head, but instead, I aimed at her arms and delivered two bursts into each of her wrists. It was an impossible shot I shouldn’t have made.

But I made it.

Easily.

“Fuck!” Lucita shouted, falling to the ground as Marissa took her gun and aimed it at the assassin’s head.

“Don’t,” I said, raising my machine gun at Lucita’s head. “It’s over. She could try and kill us, but I don’t think she’d get very far.”

“I am going to rip your fucking eyes out!” Lucita hissed, and began a deluge of Italian curses.

I kept my gun trained on her before picking up a cellphone from one of the dead men and tossing it to her side. “Call yourself a ride out of here. It’ll take you a while to use it without fingers, but I’m pretty sure you’ll figure it out. Your father is going to be dead in the next few minutes, and while you might blame me for turning you against him, I’d like to point out he had you fucking flayed, so fuck that guy. You can try and come after me, but even if you manage to kill me, at the end of the day, you’ll always know your next breath is because… “ I pressed the machine gun right to her forehead. “I didn’t pull the trigger.”

Lucita’s eyes met mine.

Then she laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Marissa asked from behind me. I could feel her eyes trained on me, horrified and fascinated at once.

“My father was right,” Lucita said, chuckling. “You would have fit into the Carnevale just fine.”

I pulled back the gun and walked out the door.

Marissa followed.