She looked around as she crossed the parking lot. Some of the nearby transients and street musicians pretended not to notice the eventful duress occurring in their immediate vicinity.

Tasìa assessed their mentality.

Better to get shot by a stray bullet than to rudely acknowledge the Škorpion being welded out in the open nearby.

Everybody is acting completely sane, right?

She grimaced. None of the men wanted to play at being her hero. Rational enough. Risk severe perforation to save a random chick?

The way they likely figured it, the look-out may have even had all the right reasons for waving a gun around, demanding her to come over. He was part of their scene, she wasn't.

As she closed in on the Look-out, she gave him a once over. He was not comfortable with the Škorpion machine pistol. Even the rotary hinge holding the fold-out stock was not popped out and secured correctly.

His only true advantage in their confrontation was he being the one possessing it.

She glanced at his feet. No sock covered the foot she shot. The seams of a bandage tapered over his ankle.

"How's your foot," she asked.

He glared back at her and his eyes narrowed.

"What would you know about that?"

"Seems like whoever did that to you must have been one hell of a sharpshooter. I certainly wouldn't fuck with them."

She now had a clear line of sight on the man holding the gun to Annebél's head. It was Ferenzi's driver.

He handled his weapon (her weapon!) with much greater assurity than the young Look-out did the Škorpion.

Tasìa did not want to get caught sizing up the driver so she turned her attention back to the Look-out.

He was their weak link, after all.

She did a double take as she noticed the select fire switch was on no-fire. Coupled with the actual safety release being set to no-fire, he was less well-armed than she was to deal with an immediate threat.

Her silence must have confounded him and prompted him to urge her to speak.

"What," he asked.

The question gave her an excuse to look him in the eyes again. As she slowly drew her stiletto out, she asked him, calmly, "it was dumb of them to give you a gun that sophisticated. You run now, I won't try throwing this in your back. Promise."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the driver turn his head towards someone, pleadingly. He was unsure what he was supposed to do now.

Must act before he gets that answer.

Her gut twitched without needing to be primed. The familiar biting scent shot up through her, and an old rule of hand-to-hand combat came to mind.

Flickers approaching the eye weaken the hands.

She let the stiletto fly deftly toward the driver's head. Indeed, he dropped the Desert Eagle to block the blade which pierced and stuck in the webbing between his fingers.

Annebél punched him in the throat and he dropped.

Tasìa approached the Look-out to disarm him. His hands proved quick. He fumbled with the trigger for a moment, pointing the barrel up, but it didn't fire.

In that instance, fear gripped his entire face. He was about to volunteer the gun over to her when a white heat smacked through her shoulder.

It had a familiar sting, like the tranq dart brassy-haired Missi planted in her ass cheek, but stronger as if an evil venom was infused inside the needle.

A gunshot flashed from inside the entrance foyer. She could make out little of what was occurring ahead of her. It was as if her analytics-mode vision reversed itself. Blinding her instead of enhancing her perception.

Tasìa squinched as she realized she could feel them jostling about inside her eyeballs.

But who was this 'them'?

As her knees weakened a hand pushed her through the door. The driver thrashed on the floor, making loud, erratic noises.

Her eyesight slowly returned. Whatever was inside her eyes got what it wanted and went on to other things.

She was relieved to see Annebél was still unharmed. She was on her knees, hands placed behind her head. Her eyes made contact with Tasìa's own.

Tasìa raised an eyebrow in the hope that it conveyed the message, where's Agu?

Annebél turned her gaze towards the driver, and let out a giggle as she did so.

Another gunman crouched, leaning against an oil drum. He held a gun aimed at Annebél. That explained the shot that came from inside during her attempt to foil the mobsters. It was fired off to regain control over Annebél.

Even so, Annebél's eyes, grin, flushed skin, and the slow purring heave of her breasts meant one thing - punching the driver in the throat was making the brawler feel super horny.

Tasìa grinned back. She quickly lost that smile when she heard her name called out.

"Tasìa del Alma-Gris," said Freddie Ferenzi.

He turned her around to face him and shoved her up on the floor against the wall.

Tasìa sized up what had just occurred. Freddie was smart. He ran an ambush on her that faked her out, completely. Annebél's endangerment and his own crew's actions were just distractions to focus her attention away from Freddie who lay in wait to take that shot.

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How long has he known who I am? The entire time, genius.

"Damn, Freddie. That was one slick move you pulled on me there."

His laughter was a bellows full, and it spewed from his lungs unhinged.

He finally spoke.

"You want to know how well I set you up, Squirt?"

He produced a cigar from his jacket pocket.

"I made Red over there smoke one to get your attention. To make you assume certain things about her immediate peril. Then once burned on that, you focused on righting a wrong. Saving your girl, getting your guns back. I put blinders on you, and you never gave pause to consider the trap being sprung around you.

"Perhaps, you are not the operative super genius that war criminal Kutuzov thinks you are. Bested by some chump in the mafia. In your shoes, I would die of shame."

The driver heaved even louder as his face turned a scarlet purple. He stomped a foot against the floor as he clutched his throat.

Ferenzi looked at the man in disgust.

"He's going to bring the heat down on us if he keeps that up."

The gunman by the oil drum stood up.

"I'll drive," he said.

Tasìa recognized the creep's reedy voiced pitch. Sal.

His face plaintively remorseless, he planted a bullet into the driver's skull from an unusual revolver whose make Tasìa was unfamiliar.

A mere three-chamber cylinder holding what was likely .22 long rifle cartridges.

Freddie clinched his lips and glanced over to the Look-out.

He had to have known the kid was feeling overwhelmed. Whatever his thug-life ambitions, the kid definitely did not sign up for this.

As Sal settled back down by the barrel behind Annebél he reloaded the chambers inside the sleekly long revolver cylinder. That would have been the opportune time for her to have struck.

The time he spent on his task was indulgent. He obviously loved his weapon.

Despite that, he remained safe since she couldn't move very much. Her muscles felt so damn relaxed. The venom itched heatedly beneath her skin, eating away at her willpower. She felt it as a distinctive entity inside her.

Ferenzi laughed once more, "you should see yourself, Squirt. That muscle relaxer makes your every expression naked to me. I couldn't see through your schemes better if I hit you up with truth serum.

"Let me take care of the most obvious one. Yo, Louis."

The Look-out stood perked up to attention. Ferenzi's right hand crawled around inside his jacket.

"What did you see just now?"

"What do mean," the young man asked. "Nothing happened. There was nothing to see."

Ferenzi's hand came up with a roll of banknotes held in it. He threw it at Louis to catch.

"Now, get lost."

Louis turned around to leave but froze when Ferenzi cleared his throat.

"Oh, one more thing -"

Louis' brows raised in anticipation.

"Tell your mother to expect something nice from me for her birthday. I'll be coming around soon."

Louis nodded his head a little too enthusiastically.

"I sure will."

He leaned the Škorpion up against the corner of the doorpost and darted out the door.

Frenzi jerked his head towards Annebél. She darted her eyes back and forth between Sal and Freddie like she was searching for an opportunity to exploit.

Finding none, she beamed a rosy-cheeked smile his way.

"Come on, Frenzy. Whatcha got for me?"

He shook his head.

"The two of you, and now just the two of us. That match-up seems a little too well-balanced for my taste."

He pulled out an air carbine from beneath his jacket, switched out a gas canister, and fed its cylinder with a pair of darts.

Freddie took aim and shot her.

Annebél winced; she then looked down.

"In the tit, Freddie?"

He shot her a second time.

With a vain attempt to stand and reach out for Ferenzi, Annebél collapsed on the floor.

"You see, Squirt. That's where you are screwed, the more you attempt to assert yourself, the more the tranq seizes up your body. If you try too hard, you can give yourself a stroke. Just a fair warning because I need you alive "

Tasìa gave him a distrustful squint.

"How do you know my name?"

Freddie flicked an index finger up in the air as if he was debating whether he should answer that question. He gave himself a nod and proceeded.

"Actually, I wasn't entirely sure until you bragged about your little massacre at the storage facility. After all, you do blend in, and I was following sighting protocol."

"Sighting protocol?"

"Yeah. We are not supposed to grab you until Control confirms through the visualization that it is you."

Tasìa squinched up her face.

"You are mafia, not bounty hunters."

Ferenzi's jowls slapped against his neck as he bellowed.

"Oh, our grudge against you is indeed personal. Ria warned that you were coming for us. However, I did some research on you, Good Christ Almighty, there is just such a bounty on you.

"All special protocol too, so I had to go through spook channels to sign up for it."

Tasìa shook her head. It took an effort to do so. Not so much strenuous resistance, but more like being in a heated jacuzzi and not wanting to come out.

"I'm starting to think this has nothing to do with that idiot's car."

She noted that didn't get an emotional rise out of Sal as she had expected. He just glanced up and shrugged. Freddie noticed that she noticed Sal's calm demeanor.

"Try your best," he said, "but he's a pretty sharp kid when he's not all smacked-up on the goofballs."

Freddie was intent on letting her know he was always a step ahead of her. It was the underlying message he conveyed in everything he said.

He must have done a deep dive into her record and decided he was out-classed. Hell of a way to compensate for his disadvantages, though.

"So, what's next?"

Freddie walked over to a desk and sat on it. He stared out the window at the buildings set ablaze.

"Sit tight, pumpkin. They'll be here soon to make the exchange."

"Exchange?"

He chuckled, keeping his natural tendency to bellow to a minimum. He raised his eye and smiled like he was about to tell her the best part.

"Yeah. You for Ria Javierra," he said just before something outside distracted him. Freddie grinned sheepishly.

"Hey, there they are," he informed her as if she should be every bit as excited to see Ria again as he was.

The boss's wife? What was that about?

She could hear it. A helicopter was landing in the parking lot.

She closed her eyes for a moment's respite, but the venom let its presence be known. She could feel it stinging at her heart, tugging against her epidermal layer of skin.

It was time to try something different. Sitting here passively was not her style.

She clenched her gut and evoked the analytical mode - the cybernetic wiring that was engraved into her very nervous system.

Could she fight the invasive venom inside her? She would have to at least try. When the mercurial vapor emitted from her sinuses Tasìa was plunged into a nebula behind her eyes.

She was reminded of the matrices and quartz lattice work inside the eyes of the beautiful Serbian assassin, Silvia. What was occurring inside her eyes was mere scaffolding compared to the intricate systems she witnessed inside Silvia.

You are not merely a temporary paralytic, she asked the venom.

No, Came the answer.

You are attempting to change me. What are you then?

She saw tentacles moving synchronously. Thousands of them. Then millions of them. Each one touching upon a singular neuron beneath her flesh.

'What are you?' She demanded.

I knew you before you were born.

Anger swelled up inside her.

'You are not my God!' She told the entity inside of her.

Without us, you would have died in your mother's womb.

Let us in.

Tasìa understood, somehow they could not cross the blood-brain barrier without her permission.

'You need to leave, now.' She told the entity.

We are patient. We are persuasive. It is for your own good. It is for the greater good. We will wait.

There was little use speaking to it. It had a directive, and it could not be persuaded.

She let her conscious mind touch back against every tentacle that seized upon her neurons. She imagined them being pushed through a tiny, subdermal hole.

She kept pushing. They began to unclench. The neurons where they let go felt ice cold. Each push brought a magnitude more pain.

Her heart felt as if it was going to stop. Entirely, it ceased functioning. Tasìa made that moment near eternal. The chem-burn at her control jacked to near-light speed as it ejected the entity, and stitched the muscle fibers of her heart and her nervous system back intact.

Tasìa opened her eyes. Venom spat out of the epidermal hole the tranq-dart had punctured into her flesh.

Her muscles felt loose but capable.

"She is not with them," Ferenzi said. He gravely repeated himself. "Ria is not with them."

She captured her breath to gather her wits before her next move. Her muscles grew more limber with every breath.

Tasìa looked around, hoping neither one of them noticed she was no longer under the influence of the venom. To her fortune, Ferenzi's and Sal's attention was focused on the three soldiers who met them at the entrance door.

"Where is she," Ferenzi demanded.

"I'm sorry," said the officer of rank, "Ria Javierra is dead."