Tasìa rolled and dropped to the floor with the Rugar Vaquero .357 revolver in her hands. She attempted to aim at the drone, but it shot up into the air by the ceiling as it bobbed and weaved to avoid her.

Don't make me do the clinch move, you won't like the Modality.

It attempted to plunk straight down on her head; Tasìa leapt away and stepped aside to avoid it.

In short order, studying the jitter of its movement, she grew accustomed to its speed, and how it pitched and yawed well enough to accurately guess where she needed to aim ahead of the target before she fired her gun.

She fired off a three-shot sweep along the path that it took to get back to her with the last shot hitting it square in its carapace.

Damaged, it righted itself but paused long enough for Tasìa to get another fix upon it. She was about to pull the trigger, but instead, she reflexively hit the floor as she saw chrome and movement out of the corner of her eye.

She rolled over, and a second drone smacked a telescopic arm against her chest. An electric jolt spread in a violent coiling torrent throughout her chest cavity.

Only to dissipate and grow chill in her bones.

Unfortunately, for the drone, her Harvested immunity was built to resist such a shock.

With a bare whit of a moment passing, her internal elemental came to be with a spontaneous intelligence aligning inside her; its directive refocusing the torrent.

It blasted the electrical shock back into the drone which short-circuited in a volatile tantrum whose loss of control left it skidding down the hallway.

Tasìa turned back around towards the drone she had shot. The telescopic arm retracted. It attempted to retreat as it splattered grainy battery acid on the carpeted floor. Tasìa shot it again, twice, dead center in its carapace.

It dropped out of the air.

Tasìa peeked into the safe room. There were no more drones, but the back wall was covered in blood and bone fragments. A nearly headless corpse and a combat shotgun lay on the floor.

Tasìa did not pause to take in the grizzly sight. She crouched over to Annebél who was still out cold. Her pulse was weak and her breath was tapering off.

"Come on, big girl. Wake up. Wake up!"

Annebél's lips appeared faded. Tasìa rubbed her thumb against the top bow and then circled her thumb around the sumptuous bottom pucker.

"Wake up! You'll make an incredibly beautiful corpse for your open casket, one day, but not this day."

Tasìa was reluctant to do it, but she administered one of the norepinephrine needles she had prepped for her own needs into Annebél's dermis just above the left wrist. Annebél's breathing improved immediately.

Tasìa wrapped her arms around Annebél while she kissed the side of her cheek and hugged her.

"Don't you ever scare me like this again," Tasìa whispered.

The wailing noise of the injured gunman filled the air. And it annoyed Tasìa.

Night Brigade, what a bunch of fucking babies playing at being soldiers.

"Go see a dentist, already and get that problem fixed," she yelled.

Annebél chuckled.

"You're all heart," she said, weakly.

Tasìa reached inside her fannypack. She had a little trouble maneuvering her hand.

Maybe, I should start wearing trousers with a lot of pockets lined up on the legs just like my favorite superhero Cable does. Nah, you have to have a really big butt to look sexy in a pair of trousers.

I'm sticking to jeans that wedgy me, even if this fanny pack is way past its limit.

She finally found what she was looking for, a bottle of Ki-Jack All Natural Energy Elixer.

"Here, drink this," Tasìa commanded as she handed Annebél the bottle.

Annebél drunk it down in three quick gulps.

"So sorry. I should have been ready for that one."

Tasìa agreed with a firm nod.

"Yeah, you should've. What were you doing not keeping a check on our six? You're lucky that you didn't get a shotgun blast right in the side of your face, and me, my rump roasted with the next shot, right after you."

Annebél shrugged, sheepishly.

"Honestly, I didn't think you had a chance in hell of knocking that wrench loose by the way you were going about doing it. I was about to suggest something but then out of the blue you succeeded."

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

True enough, Tasìa's kick style was a mockery of what her hero Sunny Chiba taught her in his old martial arts flicks, and even she knew it.

"All right, so you screwed the pooch as the Americans say. I am just glad you're still alive. Hard lesson learned for next time."

Annebél bore a grin that could melt snow.

"Will you ever forgive me?"

To answer, Tasìa patted Annebél on the cheek.

The brawler stood up to stretch. She became instantly alert when she turned to the safe room entrance.

"Hey, check the shit inside. Mi Dios! Is that Don Javierra?"

Tasìa shook her head.

"I would not know him from Adam and given that guy is missing half his face, I have even less of an idea."

Annebél crouched down beside the grotesque corpse and flipped it on its side.

"Wait, one sec... Oh, pooh. He has no wallet.."

Annebél located a large gold and diamond ring on his right-hand ring finger. She tried to remove the ring but it wouldn't come off.

"The design motif is some cheese ball Mafiaso bullshit, but it won't come off his finger. There is Latin circumscribed but of course. Fuckers really thought of themselves as Latter-Day Caesars."

"Let me give it a try."

Tasìa held a hand by the tip of the ring finger. She removed her stiletto and used it to cut off the finger just below the band.

The ring slipped off of its own accord and plunked down on the floor. Annebél scooped it up for a closer inspection.

She held it up for Tasìa to see.

"Damn," Annebél began to speak as she eyed Tasìa. "What's got you spooked?"

Tasìa recognized the blasphemous motif design on it of the two wolves devouring the Messiah and the words inscribed in Latin as the same legend engraved on the gold bar that she liberated from Hugo Brassi's office.

Ordinis Sancti Romani de Novissimis Diebus

"Even you would not believe how close you are - that legend reads:

The Holy Roman Order of the Last Days.

"Though I have a slightly informed suspicion that they are a sect that believes themselves to be Latter-Day Knights of Malta more than Latter-Day Caesars."

Annebél squinched her brows in revulsion. Evidently, she held medieval knights in high regard.

"Like, medieval paladins? Look at this obscenity," Annebél tapped the blasphemous motif. "More like later-day dastardly anti-paladins mired in the worst aspects of our modern world."

Tasìa smiled, admiringly. Annebél had volumes of French poetry in her safe house, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Villion, The Song of Roland, and many more. It was no wonder she had odd but pronounced views about certain things.

After Tasìa handed it to her, Annebél examined the ring with great scrutiny.

"Well, then. Double the damnation due to them." Annebél checked the inner band, for any written indication of the identity of its bearer. "I can indeed confirm that this is the corpse of the recently deceased Don Javierra."

Annebél gave Tasìa a pleading hangdog look.

"Mind if I keep the ring? It's to remind me of this momentous event The Fall of the House of Javierra."

"It's all yours."

Once more, the wounded gunman reminded them of his presence with a low, pleading whimper whose words could not be made sense.

Tasìa pointed up the stairs with a nod of her head.

"I suppose we have kept him long enough. Let's see what we can do about him."

Annebél started up the stairs with a brisk pace in her step.

When they made it to the top of the double flight of stairs, the corner room with the balcony stood off to their left. Tasìa surveyed the open hallway into the rooms on each wing that the open second-story space under the ribbed arches spoked out from.

A large sunroof floated above the hallway. There was no one else around except for the gunman and his captive.

Tasìa got an odd feeling though. One of the glass tiles off to the far end was busted out as if someone either shot through it from the inside or something crashed through it from the outside.

Even more oozy blue salt dripped onto, and trailed down the corridor. She then recalled the oddity that attacked Skydog. There definitely was something here though it remained almost entirely imperceptible.

Another type of phase beast?

She thought to clinch her gut to give her the Modality's extra perception abilities, but from the ruckus Annebél was making at the moment, she had other matters to attend.

"Mi Santa Muerte! In the name of all that is Holy," the brawler yelled.

Annebél stood frozen at the entranceway. Tasìa could not see inside the room or enter it to get pass the redhead's massive thighs.

"What happened here?" Annebél said to someone in an accusatorial tone.

Tasìa finally was able to peak between Annebél's legs. The gunman she had shot in the face lay on the floor bleeding in front of the open door of the balcony.

His leg was twisted up, oddly. It prevented him from standing. He tried to speak but his words only hissed through his broken teeth and the cracked maxilla of his upper gum line.

The gunman wore only a tank top and pale blue boxer shorts soiled in the blood that covered the entirety of his crotch. So much blood that she had mistaken the boxers earlier for a pair of red shorts.

There was someone else bent over the side of a waist-high hardwood dresser drawer. His arms were held to the sides of the wooden top with pinned binders made of metal clamps and chains. Unconscious, he lay face down in vomit.

He was naked from the waist down with a pair of black jeans around his ankles. Blood ran down his legs. A metal poker lay at the side of his feet.

Tasìa turned away. She had seen more than enough to know the vile violation that had occurred.

"Did you do this," Annabelle yelled. "Did you do this?"

He attempted to pull himself away from her. He grasped the shag carpet beneath his stringy arms in a futile attempt to crawl.

"Oh, no you don't!"

Annebél lifted the man by his neck and left thigh. He screamed and tried to plead for his life but it was near impossible to make out his words.

It sounded to Tasìa's ears that he was saying as he flailed his arms, "He deeds, he deeds, basement, he deeds."

Annebél walked him through the door and onto the balcony where she slung him over the side into the concrete walkway below. She leaned over the side of the balcony and followed up her assault with a double tap from the .38 carbine.

She returned to the bedroom.

"Nasty motherfucker. We now have confirmation. This was a Salvage sanctioned hit on this place after all."

Tasìa frowned.

"Likely so. But I have a feeling that this time it was personal."

She thought of the ex-president of Paraguay, Victoria de Silvia, and the humiliation tactics used against her. It was Salvage SOP, Standard Operating Procedure, and had been common for NGOs that operated with unofficial sanction throughout the last century to instill primal fear in uncooperative populaces.

There was little that Tasìa could find out about Victoria since their escape. As best Tasìa could determine, she was in hiding but under the protection of her family now. Her rescue did not make the media.

News of Tasìa's escape only circulated within bounty hunter circles.

After she sorted through her calculation, Tasìa affirmed Annebél's observation with a nod.

They checked on the victim. His breath wheezed slowly.

"Holy shit," Annebél exclaimed in recognition.

She held his head by his long greasy hair for closer inspection.

It was Sal.

"To the hospital or do we leave this fucker here?"

Tasìa thought about the first time she met Sal. She had a suspicion.

"We need to check that basement first before we do anything else."

Annebél gave a dramatic bowing gesture for Tasìa to lead them on and then she shook her head and sucked in her lovely cheeks to make an ugly face.

"I can't believe I just killed someone in the defense of that worthless piece of shit Sal Javierra."