Tasìa snarled before she spoke.

"At least a 'how are you?', or a 'I've missed you,' is in order, don't you think?"

Tatiana looked down for a moment as a pensive frown surfaced on her face. Tasìa wondered if the silver sheened flesh tone was merely a filter effect or was it the result of some underlying condition?

"Tasìa . . . neither of us is the same person that we knew the last time, years ago, when we last met. Nowhere are we near being those same individuals. We retain some loose, scattered memories that rightfully belong to those people, but they are dead and to pretend the two of us are well acquainted through them besmirches their good name and memory."

Before Tasìa could spit out the words 'bullshit!', speakers from a PA system atop a nearby building housing a small hardware store sounded out, abruptly.

It was Alisha.

"I told you that you would not like what you found. Twenty-four seven, three sixty-five, Queen Tatiana's self-righteous resolve does not let up."

Tasìa yelled out.

"You shot me in the back, you bitch!"

"I'm still ill with you, del Alma-Gris. You kept me dangling on a hook and mere seconds away from burning to death.

"The humiliation you caused me. I had to have skin graphs after I was trapped in an auto accident as a kid. I was just now this close to cardiac arrest.

"And it was all so you could devise a shit test for your boyfriend. By the way, he is someone I care deeply about, and he is much too good for your manipulative bullshit

"As for shooting you? Please, you little drama queen. I merely maimed you with a shot at the middle edge of your right oblique fissure to slow you down. I would have double tapped you at the base of your skull if I wanted you dead."

As Alisha spoke Tasìa tried to home in to clues to where the spook's location could be. She heard the sound of wooden poles clanging against one another followed by the sound of metal clanging against a concrete floor.

That sounded? Like a rake!

Tasìa shouldered the Stealth 338 LAP and fired into the display case the furthest from the entrance doorway leading into the hardware store.

"Tasìa," Aunt Tatiana began in admonishment. "Use the 338 tranq-rounds. We have to have her alive. She has the Resonance Cage sealed shut."

Alisha giggle rattled out of the PA speaker.

"Nice try there, Slim Tail."

Tasìa bit her lower lip and cursed herself as she once more realized she let herself be blind-sided. Of course, it was another text-relay AI driven recording meant to distract her.

"Duck," she yelled to Fodor as she hit the asphalt.

A sharp sound reached a crescendo above them before it bursted and pounded out a dozen whirly gigs that dropped around them.

Each one burst in turn as the explosive device smacked the ground. She was being bombarded by flashbangs that also released a mild paralytic.

Tasìa crawled with her eyes shut towards Fodor's truck. Her back, buns and legs felt tingly and numb.

She heard boots slapping rapidly against the asphalt coming towards her. Her vision was like hot silver rain beneath her lids.

Even still, Tasìa had no choice but to react then and there. She was going to lose another fight if she spent another second on the asphalt.

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While keeping her eyes squinched tightly closed, Tasìa rushed up on to her feet, sprinted towards the truck, and leapt in the air. Only then did she open her eyes to gauge her approaching point of contact with a side liner rail.

She sprung up more than nine feet in the air just in time to twist around, release the Magellani .22 revolver from its holster, and spy through her stinging eyes a bullet that skimmed off of the back of Fodor's wrist. It forced him to drop his 10 mm neo-1911 styled handgun.

Out of the corner of her limited vision, she saw movement. Tasìa jerked her upper torso towards the billboard pole tresses.

How in the Hell did that resourceful bitch get over there?

She quieted her concerns and lined up her sight.

For a brief moment, as the spook must have realized she was helplessly unable to track the midair acrobatic maneuver, Alisha froze.

It was enough time for Tasìa to drill a bullet in each of Alisha's elbows and knee caps even before the little thief landed in a crouch on her feet.

"Tasìa," Tatiana snapped at once as soon as the fight was over. "Switch to the tranq-round even still as she is capacitated. It will better facilitate easing her adjustment after decapitation."

Tasìa caught her breath. She could hear Alisha crying behind her as the American repeated the same terrified words over and over.

"Fucking bitches. They are not coming for me."

She expected a rescue from Green-Eyed Elise and her team. Now that the cats secured the routes with no more opposition from the flechettes to challenge them, the bounty hunter was likely not going to take the risk of rescuing the American spook.

Tasìa felt pity at the sight of the woman, scared shitless that she was about to be decapitated, and most frightening of all, she was going to live through the entire ghastly experience.

"Tasìa . . .," Tatiana called to her.

In response, Tasìa turned towards the silver holograph.

"Why did you send Rubin and Brassi to nab me?"

Tasìa didn't just stand there subservient, however, and wait for an answer. She went to check on Alisha's wounds.

Tasìa considered before she began to help, what did it matter if she was slowly bleeding out since the body part of Alisha would soon be worthless?

"My agents weren't there for you, Tasìa. We discovered that Alisha sabotaged the Resonance Cage settings so we could not enter. Of course, that meant the beasts themselves given their abilities to walk through walls still could now be induced to leave or go about as they pleased.

"We had a mess on our hands.

"For that reason, I needed you neutralized and out of the way so we could bring Alisha back to solve this little problem and do so with a minimum of resistance involved."

So impersonal.

What was her Aunt's real life story? The one she hid from the family? Apparently, She was the chief operative running the American Spook Town and the Human Rights Lawyer Communist she was renown for was just a cover identity?

What was that kind of loyalty to a foreign entity really about? Did she align with Americans as a rebellion against her father, General Kutuzov, due to the atrocities during the Incivility and Southwest Action that gained him notoriety?

"Tasìa?" Tatiana prompted her, once more. "I plead, I beg of you, only you can rescue Val. He is trapped in the maze of phase spaces that the Resonance Cage serves as a portal too."

"Did you have him put in there," Tasìa challenged her Aunt.

"No. It's . . . complicated. But I know the General would like to have his consigliere back and he sent you to retrieve him."

"The General? You mean, your father."

Tatiana cleared her throat.

"Do not call that one man atrocity exhibition my father."

The resentment ran deep. She also didn't seem to be taking into account she was very much her father's daughter.

Tasìa felt around in her fanny pack for a clip of tranq-rounds.

Alisha pleaded from below her.

"Do not do this. For the love of all that is holy, you cannot do this. Please, just kill me. Just kill me, okay?"

Fodor stood on the other side of Alisha ready to assist. He wrapped his wounded wrist with a bandage. Tasìa frowned on sight of the wound. Solid, purposeful aiming. It was likely another intentionally spare wound on Alisha's part.

She repeated her plea once more. Her voice grew weak and feint.

"Just kill me, okay?"

Fodor cleared his throat.

"You know," he began. Tasìa looked up into his eyes and suddenly she realized who Fodor was.

When did her Aunt Tatiana have a kid? Did anyone else in the family know about him?

"Yes, Fodor, please continue."

"There is another way into the Resonance Cage. It is a more difficult route that starts in the Sweet, but it can be done. With the phasies scouting out event anomalies and critter oddities ahead of me to be avoided, I can do it."

Tasìa nodded. She put the tranq-rounds back in the fanny pack, shouldered the Stealth 338 LAP, and put six rounds into the guillotine box, rendering it useless.

Her Aunt Tatiana remained speechless for a long moment before she answered with a simple statement of "very well then," before her image vanished.

Tasìa examined Alisha's wounds. Her kneecaps took the brunt of the damage. The American spook would not be walking for awhile.

Fodor squatted to assist.

Tasìa looked him in the eye.

"You're my little cousin, right?"

Fodor laughed.

"I could see it in your eyes when you finally figured it out."