Stephanie hobbled down the steps to the basement of the cafe. She couldn't fucking believe how sloppy she'd been. She knocked the door in the required sequence and to her surprise it was Aaron who opened it.
"What the hell? Aaron?"
He looked up at her arm holding herself up in the doorway then at her bandaged leg. "Holy shit Steph. What the fuck happened?"
"[Redacted] didn't catch you up?" She responded. He pulled her in and bolted the door shut.
"He did a couple hours ago, and I lost my shit, but he said we had time!" He let out in an aggressive whisper.
"I have a couple fucking words for his 'we have time' bullshit… but… It's really my fault; I thought I could handle it." She walked down the meter-long hall into a large wooden room with a circular table in the middle. Across it was [Redacted], who rose from his seat in shock and scanned Stephanie up and down. "What the hell happened?" he asked.
Stephanie gritted her teeth and looked away. "I didn't listen to you."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean there was clear danger, and I didn't give a shit; shot the place up. But…" She rummaged through her coat pocket and slammed a USB on the table. "I got the mothafuckin' drive."
"Jesus, Steph I really meant it when I said be careful. Still, this is what we need." He reached across and gently plucked it with two fingers.
Stephanie looked to her side at Aaron. "Where's Jacob?"
Before Aaron could answer, [Redacted] chimed in. "I couldn't reach him, and neither could Aaron in time. I stressed the gravity of the situation as best as I could through the limited means I had, but he's a no-show."
What a headache. Stephanie rubbed her temples before remembering the pain in her leg and wincing. [Redacted] motioned to the leather couch at the back of the basement as if in response. "Lay down there, you probably haven't had a proper moment to take a look at that leg."
Aaron supported Stephanie as she walked to the couch. She reached for her gun at her waistband to put it on the coffee table, but it wasn't there.
"FUCK!" Stephanie almost couldn't bear it. She left it at that office. "No no no no, the gun. My gun." She patted herself down frantically, shoving Aaron off her side, which caused her to stumble onto the leather couch.
"Jesus Steph, what're you—," started Aaron.
"My gun. My sister's gun. It's gone! I left it at that place. I have to go back!" She said.
"You can't," [Redacted] rebuked sternly. "By now it's crawling with sicarios. You'd be signing your life away."
"You don't understand. It's worth more than my life." She tried to lift herself up.
[Redacted] grew uncharacteristically upset. "You foolish girl, it's not just your life on the line. Sit back on that damn couch." His tempered rage made the normally collected Stephanie uneasy. She lowered herself back on the couch with a vacant stare towards him.
"We are working with unknown elements," he said. "I understand it's important to you, but if you die, nothing will ever be important to you ever again, you get what I'm saying?"
They stood in silence for half a minute before [Redacted] broke it. "It's already late. Let's call it here so we can get up early and I can fill you both in on why we needed the drive." [Redacted] walked past the couch and disappeared through a mahogany door. Aaron put his hand on Stephanie's shoulder as reassurance before walking out through a beige door. The original team all had bedrooms in this basement they kept a secret even from their former employer.
Stephanie decided to close her eyes for a moment. The exhaustion of the day was catching up to her
***
She woke up in a terror. She needed her gun, if she could even call it a gun. It was more than that. It was her long gone sister. She looked at the clock on the wall: 3:27 am. Stephanie walked towards her door, into the room, to her gun rack. She grabbed a knife and a silenced MP5, wrapping its strap over her shoulder. When she finished those preparations, she hobbled out of the basement.
***
The perimeter was flooded with killers. In the grimy alleyway ahead were two of them in the dark leaning on a large green garbage container. Stephanie recognized the bleach-blond-haired kid. She had given him a ride-along less than a year ago. She raised her submachine from behind the wall and shot twice. Blonde kid grabbed his throat as blood dripped down his arm while the other collapsed immediately with no movement.
Stephanie walked past them out to the building. Not nearly as many guards as she thought. They must not have expected her to come back. In her escape, she had found the secret exit of the building at the back. Upon arriving, it was devoid of life. Stephanie was unsurprised that due diligence hadn't been done. A sloppy job to the very end.
She traversed through the small hatch and appeared inside the break room. The interior was dark and empty; shards of ceramic were spread on the counter and floor underneath the cabinets hanging on by single hinges. Stephanie avoided stepping on anything, tiptoeing around the corner and to A. Head's office where she remembered using her pistol last. The door was already wide open, so she walked to the back desk, and saw the 1911 reflecting some moonlight through the barred window. Thank God. She hunched over and grabbed it when the door she entered through creaked shut.
"Stephanie, you came back," said a female voice from behind her.
Stephanie was frozen in place. If she turned around now, those might be her last moments. In front of her was a mirror on the wall that revealed the platinum-haired figure from behind where the door was. She had her chin in both of her hands with her elbows on her lap.
"They tell any old Tom my name now," Stephanie responded.
"No, we've met," the woman said.
"Have we now?" said Stephanie.
"Yes."
"You must not have been real fucking memorable then," said Stephanie.
"I wonder, if you walked out of here today alive, would you remember me then?"
"Sure, man. Would need a name, though," said Stephanie. She figured that when she gets out of here, having as much information as possible would be for the best.
"Dahlia. Pavord," said the woman.
"Wait, I do know you. You were just so generic I'd forgotten you," Stephanie watched her in the shadows through the mirror. The woman hadn't moved until then but began standing up out of nowhere.
"You know what I have to do right?" the woman asked.
"Too bad you don't shut up." Stephanie could feel her gun was loaded, so she turned and fired, but the gun burst apart, and shards of hot metal hit her arm and right eye. She winced and yelped in pain, falling back into the desk while letting go of her gun. "No. Jasmine." She began to tear up. Her sister's gun was scrap metal on the floor. But no time to cry. She placed her hand on the trigger of her MP5, but then the strength in her arm faded.
Stephanie didn't see it. It just rang and there was a hole that cleared her neck. She wobbled as a stream pulsed from her throat. She covered it with a hand loosely out of shock. Her voice came out as white noise. She stepped back with so little grace that her ankle twisted and she fell onto the desk's edge with her neck. She writhed like a seizure overcame her, legs flailing like peddling a phantom bicycle and she gripped harder to stop the blood and she felt tears. She crawled into a fetal position and kept shaking her head.
"Ah, I'm…I'm sorry. I did that before I could ask for proper last words, and I shouldn't have. But you shouldn't have reached."
Stephanie gurgled.
"Still, I think you'll look fine at the wake."
The gurgling weakened.
"I really wish you could speak. Your final words were rather pitiful. But that's what you get for acting so recklessly in life up till now without ever being punished for it. You thought there was more life to live outside this room. There wasn't."
Stephanie tried to lift the gun. She wanted to take this bitch out with her at least.
"Oh right, sorry", the woman raised her pistol and shot Stephanie again, this time, with pinpoint accuracy to the cerebrum. Stephanie recoiled and laid still all at once.
A man entered behind her with a gun raised as Dahlia holstered hers. Upon seeing her he lowered his gun.
She turned to him. "That's one. Call a look around for bodies. Some will pop up."