Tasìa snapped her head back so the goons would not see her. They seemed preoccupied - chests poked out like proud peacocks, mouths agape like idiots, but a quick glance in her direction by any of them would have exposed her.

She rolled over and she covered herself inside the canvas. Tasìa's nervous hands squeezed a roll of coins through the fanny pack netting.

Why did Kae-Kae lie? She was offered her freedom for merely setting Tasìa up and for this, also? She rubbed the roll once more, an honorarios de asesino, unique to the underworld of assassins.

It all made so little sense. Tasìa reviewed in her mind what Kae-Kae had said.

I'm dead, I am dead, I am dead! I was holding onto something really valuable for somebody.

Castro was merely the broker between two other parties in a transaction of the most serious consequence.

Losing the coins must have been what got her killed.

Did they offer Kae-Kae her freedom for holding on to the coins? No, that did not explain the events Tasìa had just witnessed.

That must have been the result of two separate deals Kae-Kae committed herself to that wound up being at cross purposes.

Tasìa shook her head. The past two days had been a living hell for that woman.

She took a minute to pray for the troubled soul of her former enemy to be at peace.

She concluded her prayer with a plea of her own.

Lord, never let me be in a place of vulnerability like that poor woman, ever again.

Tasìa squeezed the roll of coins, again. She took one out and studied it.

This was becoming ritual for her. She thought of drilling a hole in one of the coins and wearing it as a necklace.

An eagle in flight on one side, the goddess Columbia on the other. Tasìa grinned. Lady Freedom was very beautiful. Muy hermosa.

The coin was certainly sigil worthy.

She kissed the goddess and pressed the coin to her chest.

With the blessing of the Almighty, you and me, we will prevail against the Infernal Madré, goddess Columbia.

She pocketed the coin, and put the roll back in her fanny pack.

Wrapped under the canvas, Tasìa wondered how long she should remain there.

When she had seen Kae-Kae waiting at the picnic table, the woman was waiting for something to happen.

For the klaxons to go off, obviously.

That meant the lockdown had nothing to do with herself, Tasìa concluded.

It would be for the best to wait.

When the goons cleared out, she would make her move.

As she thought this, the familiar sound of a drone buzzed above. She peaked up through a narrow crack in the canvas folds.

Almost directly above her, a drone flew. A camera extended in a rotational pattern from the body of the drone like a wolf sniffing down-range. The hovering Dog'O'War peaked into the long windows of the slanted dorm roof.

Where did the other drones go?

When she committed to listening for them, Tasìa heard the hum of multi-part harmony, an uproar of sound compared to the routine buzzing of patrol drones.

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She moved the piece of canvas that covered over her face to the side.

Tasìa gazed from left to right. There were six other drones in her line of sight scanning the yard. All Dog'O'Wars, but to her relief, the under-swivel turrets of these units were not fitted for ballistic weaponry.

Instead, miniature flare tracers were braced to the swivel mount and fed into a spinner barrel. She had seen the design before in the Vida Escondida. The units accompanied sharp-shooters to mark targets.

The scout version of the Dog'O'War tended to be lightly armoured for greater speed, range and maneuverability when compared to a fully armed one designed to withstand an anti-material slug or two.

Tasìa considered how she should proceed from here.

She could try to crawl back to the hatch and climb back into the greenhouse.

The gardener was likely gone at this point. Tasìa could wait it out another hour longer; she would still have time to commit to doing some mapping of the aqueduct maintenance support tunnels after finding a safe enough route to get there.

While she conceived a strategy to accomplish the task, a warm heat and an accompanying tingle spread just beneath her skin. Her vertebrae pulsed as if electrically charged and the back of her skull felt like it was being consumed in fire.

At first, Tasìa feared it, but at an intuited level of her consciousness, she knew something lying dormant was now waking up inside her.

It was persistent as she tried to concentrate on her plan. Your strategy is flawed, the thing riding her neurons like lightning told her.

When they clear out the evidence, Castro's body, they'll bring in the guards and dogs to search through everything.

Finally, with a burst of what felt like fire pulsing through her veins in the form of an ultra-tuned shot of adrenaline, she got the message.

This was not a time for caution but one for action.

She eyed the radio tower, the assembly of drones, and the three goons laughing it up as they bagged Kae-Kae's body.

All three factors would have to be dealt with to clear the way to the Spore Isolation Unit.

Tasìa raised half up. Aiming at the boots of the three armed men, she shot in a careful arc of two bullets per target.

Grass shot up in front of them. The last man yelped loudly, and he fell down. The other four men took cover behind their trucks.

It was the best she could hope for, as the .32 was not a long-ranged weapon. It was not even a reliably effective medium-ranged one.

The drone was being piloted by a human controller, Tasìa surmised. An AI would have zeroed in on her position almost instantly after the shots were fired.

It swiveled around awkwardly because its controller had no idea what the hell was happening.

She put the last three bullets in the center of its mass to cause the maximum amount of damage.

It bursts forth with sizzling chemicals splashed all about. The oxidation of their exposure caused the carapace pan that held the shredded battery to catch fire.

With a fresh clip in hand, Tasìa switched out the magazine. She placed the gun back in it's holster as she watched the damaged drone drop onto the yard.

She needed to cause dissarray to eliminate their advantages over her. To do that, she would have to get closer to the radio tower she had keenly studied from day one of her incarceration. There were three seperate line connectors she had previously spotted on it that were necessary to knockout their communication.

Tasìa sprinted across the roof ridge; she jumped down into a tumble on top of the glass panels. She had to roll into it to avoid both injury and glass breakage.

Several three-round bursts from a gas discharging auto-fire smacked into the roof nearby her.

She took note, that person must have moved up from the safety of the trucks.

Still in her tight roll, Tasìa stomped her feet down at the roof bottom edge and she lunged herself across the little garden. She aimed for a rung on a high lamp post.

She grabbed it on her downward volley. The momentum pushed her legs upward.

Good.

It allowed her to grip the post with her thighs and hang upside down. She grabbed her .32 caliber pistol, again.

From here, she spotted the goon firing the three-round bursts from his assault rifle as he laid down on the yard flat against it.

She tisked at his stupidity.

Amateurs. Amateurs. Amateurs.

The surface area of his body was at a maximum exposure for one going up against an opponent in a higher position.

It greatly extended her effective range.

She emptied the magazine of .32 rounds into him. All of which ripped into the man's shoulder at an angle going into his torso.

As she dropped down and sprinted to the wall to which Felicité mentioned to her to search, Tasìa thought of the man she just shot.

He would be extremely lucky to survive the dozens of bullet fragments that tore into him.

She took a short moment to ask herself: how do I feel about that?

The tingling in the back of her head swelled up like a symphony. She reveled in the electric feeling bouncing around inside her skull as she considered her actions in justification of them.

Much worse than assassins, these goons were sadistic murderers who took pleasure in their bullying before their boss killed Kae-Kae.

She had never before mortally wounded someone, but Tasìa vowed to never feel a single thrice damned to Hell ounce of remorse for the actions she just committed so long as she lived.

She recalled Green-eyed Elise's favorite quip.

Couldn't give less a shit, so why are we still talking about it?