Alisha and Tasìa walked down a street of residential bungalows with large rows of oaks lined up along the walkway. A neighborhood with a working class temperament where the rolling spread of topography reminded her of Roberto and Terry's neighborhood with the local ragtagged kids engaged in impromptu cockfights.

Tasìa winced in disgust with herself.

She didn't think about the couple as often as she should given they were doing her a favor at the time they went missing.

Sure, she paid them the Liberty gold coin, and promised them more where that came from if they helped Sinclair with her rehabilitation. Still, the situation didn't sit right with Tasìa

For helping her, their house was tossed, and evidence suggested the three of them were abducted. So why wasn't their cause weighing on her mind to the extent that it should?

It's not like I had a choice when I got the hell out of Villa Marròn with mobsters, bounty hunters, and mercs showing up everywhere looking for me.

I don't even have a clue where to start looking for them; I can't save everybody! That's just the harsh unreality of the world we live in.

Beside her, Alisha chuckled.

"The way your lips are moving, you must have quite a dialog going on upstairs."

Tasìa glanced over and she stifled a smirk at the American's bug-eyed appearance. Then she remembered that she wore the very same specs when Beauregard screwed her.

He didn't seem to mind. Typical guy just happy to get his dick wet.

Her grin did not leave her face even as she focused on the here and now.

"Yeah," Tasìa answered. "I'm trying to sort out the obligations I have on the itinerary. It's a bit overwhelming."

"Demona tells me that if we help you with those very same obligations, you'll apply that skill-set of yours towards her physical embodiment problem. Mind going over that list for me?"

Tasìa's eyes lowered as she smiled. Just what was she getting herself into?

Demona's embodiment problem must involve putting together one helluva security breach for the spooks to willingly get entangled in Tasìa's affairs.

Then she pieced it together. She knew where Demona intended for that breach to occur.

Ohh....

Their fates were even more connected than Tasìa had suspected. The targeted location was the same place that in her cat burglar days Tasìa hoped to get neurosurgery to solve her sexual dysfunction.

"Before I answer, to solve her embodiment problem, Demona has in mind a specialist clinic in the Vida Escondida, doesn't she?"

The All-American Ms. Harrington chortled.

"Not much escapes you, does it?"

"In this case, how can it not? Klínica Kompleta. The abandoned practice of the notorious Dr. Johanna Borges. It's where I lost most of my crew when Green-Eyed Elise ambushed them."

"So you are itching for a rematch? Elise is in town."

Tasìa stopped in her tracks. Though it was very late at night, walking in the open suddenly made Tasìa feel vulnerable.

"Santa Muerta..." Tasìa stifled her desire to curse. "For now, I would like to avoid her. I have too many other matters to deal with."

Tasìa stopped by an oak along the residential street, and she crouched. She motioned for Alisha to join her.

Alisha continued to speak. She eyed Tasìa carefully as she spoke.

"I don't think that you can avoid Elise. At some point, you have to make contact with Kutuzov's men, right? That is whom she is contracted to neutralize and capture. At least, that is the contracted and stated part of her game. There is much more at play with that one.

"After all, she should have already made an attempt to take you out as you are still a highly valued target under an open bounty, but you are more valuable to her as a means to set up Kutuzov.

"Though, that leads us to the weird part."

Tasìa held her head down, deep in troubled thoughts.

"What do you mean?"

"She got that hacker associate of yours sprung from the IMCQ to track Kutuzov down. They've had a telemetry fix on Kutuzov's bunker for several days now.

"So, perhaps they intend for you to lure Kutuzov and his men out. I can only speculate. It feels like something is missing — an X factor in this equation."

Tasìa set aside Felicité's betrayal for the moment. The Argentinian would pay mightily when the time came.

No, that other factor that bedeviled Alisha. Tasìa had a notion of what it could have been. She recalled the phone call from Felicité from the previous evening.

"You met a Serbian by the name of Sylvia? Tracked to some of your secret accounts, actually."

Tasìa nodded.

"Yes. You helped me out there. Jammed that satellite signal that was set up to kill me."

Felicité paused for a second.

"That's... right. Thanks for reminding me. Let me check on something."

Sylvia was a bigger factor in Elise's hunt than either Tasìa or the General, but why? Tasìa thought back to that night at the Recycling Center when she encountered the Serbian assassin.

Sylvia was Manifested. The Salvage had altered the assassin's eyes with a living crystal that induced hypnogogic mind control. Tasìa had come across references to the wetworks program that operated out of Ward Ocho in Demona's neoPalm PA.

There was another factor to consider. Before the IMCQ got nuked, Bajamutté rescued the Manifested of Ward Ocho.

Is that why Sylvia is placed at such a premium value by the Salvage? She is the last one in that program they have access to?

Perhaps, the Salvage tasked Elise to tie up that loose end, and the reward offered was an exceptionally lucrative one.

Tasìa turned the notion over in her head before she finally rejected it. It didn't explain Sylvia's connection to Felicité's odd little request to deliver the data card to the EU diplomat responsible for investigating human rights abuses.

That set-up was in the works from the start. The answer was staring her in the face.

There is a prior relationship between Sylvia and Felicité.

Also:

Both Sylvia and Felicité wore dampeners.

It had not occurred to Tasìa previously because dampeners fulfilled different purposes and utilized different technology dependent on specific usage. Some criminals wore a type that suppressed their urge to commit violent acts.

The kind Felicité wore was a deterrent to Tier-One Neural Net Specialist who could jack into the internet through their sensorium uninhibited without a dampener.

Then there was the dampener on Sylvia that kept her Manifestation within the norms of human expression.

In either case with Sylvia and Felicité, their minds were being tampered with by the Salvage. There was more than what met the eye in their relationship, and Tasìa be damned if she could sort it out.

So much for achieving a mere answer to the puzzle when so damn many questions have yet to even be properly asked.

Tasìa shook her head as she now gazed up. Fortunately, the haze of the city was at their backs. The research vessel floating in interplanetary space was a larger speck of heavenly realistate than it had been a little more than a week previously.

She recalled what the Serbian told her.

Silvia's eyes scanned the stars. Tasìa thought the Serbian assassin seemed lost in thought, but then her eyes fixed on one location, and she jerked her arm up to point at it.

"Tasìa, do you see just a thumbnail above the star Gacrux, but slanted in the direction of Beta Centauri, that there is a bluish-green object? It is a bit dim and small, but quite distinctive once you focus on it."

"That X factor, Alisha. It's right there."

Tasìa directed her gaze.

"Do you see it?" she asked.

Alisha frowned.

"That oddly greenish-blue object? That's the new nebula they've been talking about on the newsfeeds."

Tasìa suppressed a chuckle.

Who the hell had ever heard of a spontaneous nebula? Hundreds of light years across, and limited to that speed in their steller formation. Bloody ridiculous to even consider the possibility!

This lady spook who had the tenacity to be a double agent sounded quite naïve at the moment, Tasìa assessed of her campanion as the rant inside her grew into a state of conniption.

With the prevalence of amateur astronomers, how long would the powers-that-be keep that lie up? The ship has a metallic sharpness to its texture beneath all the luster. More importantly, why were the powers-that-be even bothering with a lie?

"No. Alisha. It is not a nebula. That is Zafír Rózsa, the missing research vessel."

Alisha laughed out loud.

"No fucking way! I've seen the nebula at high magnification. Just the most beautifully spectral thing you could ever hope to witness with your own blesséd eyes."

Tasìa studied it again.

"Do you not see the metallic lines delineated beneath the haze and shimmer? It's even more noticeable now than when I first spotted it a few weeks ago."

Alisha let out a teasing pshaw as she shook her head.

"Come on. We need to get moving."

Tasìa stood up and gazed once more at the Zafír Rózsa.

Were they living in two different universes? Tasìa thought with much exacerbated hyperbole.

I know what I see. Is the power of suggestion so strong that a faked media image can be planted in people's heads that prevents verification with their very own eyes?

She followed Alisha further to the end of the residential area. After they crossed through a copse of trees and ran across a highway, Alisha stopped to catch her breath.

She spoke as she leaned over and held her knees.

"Okay. You still haven't told me the items on your agenda. I can't be of much help if I don't know what to expect."

Tasìa cleared her throat.

"Rescuing Val is first. You haven't been forthright about his disappearance, Alisha."

Alisha nodded.

"Fair enough. He is in the Resonance Cage. I'll have to explain the nature of the cage when we open it. What else?"

"Next, we hunt down Sal Javeirra. An asshole psycho killer who preys on young women. He was going to be mine and Annebél's priority for the evening, but we got a little sidetracked."

Alisha's brows crinkled.

"What about your Aunt Tatiana?"

"That's the next task we have lined up."

Alisha frowned tersely.

"I'm just going to let you know now that you are not going to like what you find."

Tasìa did not respond to what was said but she urged Alisha forward instead. Ahead of them was an industrial park that was laid out like a strip mall with a maze of parking spaces surroundinga maze of small buildings.

"One last item on your schedule is contacting Kutuzov, right?"

Tasìa wanted to correct the American, but given Demona's virtual proximity, she needed to phrase her words delicately.

"Actually, Leòn. But that is more of a mutual matter between our respective parties than a personal one on my part."

Alisha nodded. "Okay. That sounds like maybe forty-eight hours in all that we need to devote to that set of objectives. What's so funny?"

Tasìa forced herself to stop laughing.

"The way I have been going at it today, tomorrow shall be devoted to sleep."

Alisha grimaced, though she didn't say anything.

They could see the garage from the street now. The van was parked diagonally against a side street alley.

If luck went her way Silver Fox left supplies for the Stealth 338 LAP inside it.

On their approach to the garage, something nagged at Tasìa as she wondered how Annebél and Beauregard were faring on their end of the mission.

Something wasn't adding up. Again, X-factor Silvia.

Tasìa held the wonderfully pregnant woman in her mind's eye. The beautiful baby bump, her swollen breasts, and her deep navel groove. She turned that vision of Sylvia around in her head. More of her pregnant condition was revealed by the ample addition of saddle sacks to her buttocks and thighs.

And the magnificent S curve of her vertebrae as it lead up to her shoulders.

Tasìa realized she was being destracted by her envy of Sylvia's pregnant condition. She set that aside as she sorted through her thoughts for an answer.

The tattoo.

That damned tattoo on Sylvia's shoulder. Two wolves devour Christ.

Whoever they were, they were the ones who controlled Sylvia in her wet-work missions. They were not a hunting club.

Tasìa hoped she had not put Annebél in danger. She also remained hopeful that Beauregard was just as naïve about the motives of the powers-that-be in the games of spooks as she was.

Both of them caught up in a river of deceit.