Something was off.

She noticed it immediately. Most people passing by her door would never notice the layer of grease on the handle, so carefully applied. And, apparently, neither had the intruders, since the slight disturbance in the grease was, well, there. But she knew that they had not come completely unprepared, as she could not make out any fingerprints. This meant that they had at least put on gloves.

Surely, in other circumstances, she would have given them some pointers on how to properly sneak into a hostile base, but now she had other plans. She didn’t know how many people were in there, or who had sent them, but planned to find out.

Going in directly was not an option. For all she knew, their orders were to kill on sight. Or, perhaps, to have a “chat” with her. Really, the possibilities were endless.

She had prepared for this scenario. The apartment next to hers was vacant. It was rented year round, but no one had ever seen the lodger. That was because, in fact, she was the lodger. Her partner often joked that if someone needed an escape plan, or a backup one, no matter how improbable the circumstances were, she would have one. She never took offence at the jibe. Took pride, in fact, in her capability to plan ahead and, especially, to get out of sticky situations. This setup was no exception. So she broke into the ever empty suite next to hers. Well, technically using the key wasn’t actually breaking in, but those were details. Silently closing the door behind her, she made her way to the vent. She mentally thanked her trainer for telling her to always stash some knockout gas. He was an internationally wanted contract killer, the man people would consider the worst possible role model. But not to her. She owed him her life, her training, even the few morals and boundaries she had had come from him. She had grown up as his disciple, seen him as the only example to follow.

She used a set of screwdrivers, hidden under the couch cushion, to unscrew the bolts and remove the grate over the air vent. No trace of her entry in the apartment would exist. She hoisted herself up to the vent and slipped in. The awkward angles weren’t a problem. Her mentor had insisted on teaching her rock climbing, often basing in mountainous areas and taking frequent week long trips on the peaks. She had hated every initial move, the unforgiving stretch of her muscles and joints pivoting, holding her over what had always seemed an infinite void. Yet, she had eventually come to enjoy, revel in it. The ability to control her movements to the millimeter. The sharp focus. The terrifying beauty of a possible drop. 

It also made her able to scale almost anything really quickly, natural or man-made. Which helped when running from guard dogs. Or mobsters. Or machine gun fire. Or, once, an angry mime. She did a lot of running. Slowly, she crawled through the cold vents, hands gliding over metal until she reached her room, recalling the blueprints she had flirted out of the Department of Buildings clerk.

She stopped just shy of her living room vent, in the off chance one of them had glanced at it. There were, as best she could tell from the different intonations, four of them. The two she could see were impressively armed. They were speaking something she couldn’t recognize, but by their lighter skin and guttural tone, was probably an Eastern European language. One of them was sprawled on her couch, already practically falling asleep. This would make things easier.

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Without making a sound, she twisted her arm behind her and grabbed the gas canister, pulled the pin, and slammed her other palm into the grate, tossing the knockout gas into the room. The men jumped up, reaching for their weapons, but they would be asleep in seconds. She didn’t stay to observe, though, crawling as quickly as she could in reverse, so as to not be effected by the fumes. Still, as she dropped back into the adjacent room, she could feel the effect of the gas, her head heavier, her vision spinning for a few seconds, her breathing slowed. She hoped the other tenants weren’t feeling it as well. She didn’t need the cops showing up. After replacing the vent, screws and screwdriver, she waited a few additional minutes for the gas to clear before she slinked out of the room to slide through her own door, still feeling off-balance.

“I have to have a chat with Jo about the potency of that stuff next time we meet” she thought, shaking her head.

Or not.

The men were sleeping like babies.

She grabbed four zip cuffs out of a drawer in her bedroom and tied the men, making sure they were tight around their wrists, and then gagged them by ripping a bed sheet into strips and stuffing it in their mouths, keeping it in place by tying another strip around their heads. She dragged them to different parts of the apartment. Sure, if she had been a rookie, she might have stuffed them all in one place, but she wasn’t. And that was the mistake the men had made. They thought they were attacking a beginner, or worse, a civilian, it was obvious. They hadn’t installed any safety measures, or a lookout in the hallway. They hadn’t noticed that all the vents in her apartment were missing their bolts, and were only propped into place. And, evidently, they had missed her three concealed caches in the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom, each holding a weapon, documents, and five thousand dollars in cash.

Fools.

They had thought that simply pointing their guns at her would make her surrender. She would soon disprove them. She put one man in a wardrobe, another in the bathroom, and a third in the bedroom, tied to the bed’s headboard. The final man she strapped to a chair in the middle of the room, using up some duct tape to secure him. Ah, duct tape, the everyman’s tool. He seemed the leader, his gear in slightly better shape than the others’. If she was wrong, she could simply start over with another one. She started brewing a pot of coffee. By the time it was done, the man had woken up. There were also muffled groans and shouts from the other areas of the apartment.  She walked over to the man on the chair.