The Assassin Page 8

  Their leader would have to be a man capable of thinking ahead to securing a private space, where he knew they wouldn’t be disturbed. Not the second man, doing most of the laughing. He, too, would just go along. He wasn’t innocent, either. He had free will, like the first man, and he’d chosen to do what he’d done. But Ceres doubted highly if either of these two buffoons would have come up with the idea of raping a woman on their own or, even if they had, have the sustained concentration to execute such a plan.

  He saw what he was looking for, in the third man: as he stepped out into the night, his eyes shifted back and forth.

  He was observant; he was the leader.

  It hadn’t been challenging to discover where the three men spent their pay; they were creatures of habit and disliked to boot. No one questioned who Ceres was, or why he wanted to know. Indeed, they all seemed to assume that the disreputable trio owed Ceres money and he did nothing to disabuse them of the notion as it was an extremely convenient one. They were, he’d learned from the questions he’d been asked, and the assumptions behind them, gamblers. That a man in an expensive suit was asking after them said, to the trio’s acquaintances, that they’d finally run afoul of a loan shark they couldn’t avoid.

  Ceres watched, in silence, as the men chatted about what to do next.

  Eventually, they decided to visit a brothel. This, too, was an action he’d been led to expect. The madam of the brothel next to Justi’s café, a sour-faced woman with huge eyeballs, had told him in no uncertain terms that the men—Antap, Rocana and Lamar—were no longer welcome at her establishment. One of them had beaten a girl so badly she’d lost an ear.

  The trio started forward, arm in arm, singing.

  He crept forward, matching their pace. And then, carefully, he tipped a flower pot into the street.

  It smashed to the ground directly in front of them.

  Antap, the man on the right, looked up. “What was that?”

  “A flower pot, you nitwit.” Rocana, their leader, was impatient.

  “No, I mean why’d it fall?”

  “Probably a cat or something. Who cares, come on.”

  With another mistrustful glance at the ledge, Antap continued on. He was clearly the smarter of the two lackeys, but lacked the courage to assert himself. Lamar, the third man, hadn’t said anything at all but just stared, glassy-eyed, at the world around him. Drugs, Ceres concluded.

  A few minutes later, another flower pot crashed to the ground.

  “There’s something up there!” wailed Antap.

  “I told you, it’s just a cat.”

  There was a soft thud as a dead cat landed in the mud.

  Antap shrieked, like a little girl. Lamar just stared at it, as though waiting for it to do something.

  “There’s something up there!”

  Rocana rolled his eyes. “And what do you think it is, a ghost?”

  Antap looked around worriedly.

  This was going to be fun.

  After another hurried conference, the men kept walking.

  “Something threw a dead cat at us!”

  “Oh, right, because that makes a lot of sense. Someone’s up there right now, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce and, meanwhile, he’s trying to throw us off balance by—what?”

  Actually, you’re fairly on target. Too bad you’re so drunk, ugly and stupid.

  The men turned down an alley, taking a shortcut to the brothel.

  Another dead cat dropped down on them, this time brushing Antap’s arm as it fell.

  Antap stopped dead in his tracks.

  Ceres glanced right, then left. The alley was deserted, as he’d known it would be.

  A fairly heavy gauge cotton rope had been strung across the alley, reaching from one building to the other. A laundry line, presumably, although now devoid of laundry. Earlier, Ceres had tested it to see how much weight it would hold; whoever had tied those knots knew their business, and it hadn’t needed much more than a little help from him to hold his weight.

  He was now about twenty feet up from the ground, not a bad height at all but one that allowed for possibilities.

  Jumping out into space, he grabbed the middle of the line one-handed and swung himself around, so both hands clutched it tightly. Then, jackknifing his body, he swung it up and over and, having executed a perfect flip, dismounted and dropped to his feet in the mud.

  He straightened gracefully, facing the three men.

  They stared at him, open-mouthed. Here he was, this apparition in black, smiling for no apparent reason.

  He held up his hand. “Gloves,” he said unnecessarily.

  No one answered.

  Finally, Lamar ventured a comment. “What are you, some kind of gymnast?”

  “Yes,” said Ceres, “that’s exactly what I am.”

  He watched them digest this.

  “You men,” he continued brightly, “are rapists.”

  Rocana started forward.

  Ceres held up a restraining hand. “Oh, I understand.” He smiled. “If she weren’t such a slut, she never would have been raped, right? She’s a beautiful woman—I bet all the women you’ve raped have been beautiful women, haven’t they? And really, weren’t they asking for it? Walking around outside, by themselves, with no man to protect them like a proper woman should?” His tone was friendly, indulgent, and the three men began to relax visibly.

  He could see the cogs turning in their sad little minds: perhaps this new man was an ally, a friend. He understood.

  Ceres walked up to them, still smiling. He pulled out his gun and shot Lamar in the foot.

  Howling, Lamar dropped to the ground as his foot exploded in a shower of gore.

  Antap rushed him and he hit the other man in the solar plexus, dropping him like a stone. He rolled, gasping, in the mud.

  That left Rocana. He took his time, deciding how to best engage his opponent. In the end, he opted for a full-on frontal assault. Ceres dropped him, too. And then, while all three men were immobilized, he hog tied them.

  Leaning back against one of the ever-present rain barrels, he studied the results of his work.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, “before we get to work, I’d like to educate you. You see, people want the world to be fair. Scum like you take advantage of that desire, promoting the idea that if something terrible happens, it’s because whoever it happened to deserved it. And people leap at this idea; it’s a comforting buffer of fiction that shields them from the truth.”

  He paused, savoring the terror in their eyes. They moaned through their gags.

  “Don’t worry,” he told Lamar with a smile, “although death from exsanguination is a real concern for you, you’ll be dead long before it’s a possibility.”

  Lamar began thrashing furiously.

  “However,” he continued, “as I was saying, to survive in the world, a woman has to be so focused on self-defense that she has little, if any time for anything else. It’s her job to prevent rape—which, if you think about it, is really infantilizing to men, is it not? The suggestion that we cannot be expected to control our own lusts because what? We’re so weak?

  “Even if one woman does manage to thwart the would-be perpetrator, she hasn’t stopped him from turning his attentions to someone else and raping them instead. Which, well, that’s rather illogical, isn’t it? Deflecting the violence onto a different target is hardly preventing it.” He paused, pretending to think. “And then, of course, there’s the issue of clothing. Surely, if a man is intent on raping a woman, an extra layer of cotton is hardly going to make a difference. It’s not armor, you know.” He smiled, and his smile was terrifying.

  “My consort,” he said sadly, kneeling down and removing a knife from the sheath on his calf, “is denied—by men such as yourself, if the term men can really be applied to you—the same confident access to public space that I enjoy, simply by virtue of the fact that I have a cock and she doesn’t.” He tested the blade. “What do you think about a system that
rewards physical dominance? Do you enjoy it? Has it brought contentment into your lives?”

  He straightened up and stepped forward. “Because you’re about to find out what it’s really like, my new friends, living with such a system.”

  His eyes met Rocana’s, and there was a sudden, horrible knowledge in them.

  “Yes,” repeated, “I said my consort. Funny, isn’t it, how these things happen?”

  He knelt down again, placing his hand on Rocana’s chest. Try as they might, they weren’t escaping these knots.

  “Now I understand that you like violating women in all three orifices at once; the term I heard you use earlier this evening was three-hole cum slut, is that correct?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer; not that any of them could answer.

  “So,” he continued, still speaking calmly and cheerfully, “I’ve decided to return the favor.”

  He held up his knife, the blade glittering in the moonlight.

  “One of you gets it down the throat, one of you gets it up the ass, and one of you, the luckiest man of all, will get it up the cunt I’m going to make for you, before I slowly disembowel you.”

  Chapte Nine

  He stopped at a roadside stall and bought himself a cup of coffee. He needed it.

  The sun was warm and bright, but it felt like needles on his half-closed eyes. He paid the man, took the dubious brown beverage, and left.

  The target was dead; the men who’d raped Udit were dead. It was finally time to go home.

  He wouldn’t, however, be going without the woman he’d already begun to think of as his.

  He sipped his coffee, deciding it was probably a coffee substitute. The locals used a mixture of acorns and roasted grain, sometimes with actual coffee grounds mixed in. In either case, it was hot and he needed something to occupy himself as he thought about what to do next.

  Kidnapping her was an option, of course, but not the optimal action to begin their married life together. He’d prefer it if he could convince her to leave; he knew that once she had left, and gotten over her guilt at rejecting her father’s chosen life, she’d be much happier.

  That she felt such guilt was obvious, and he didn’t blame her. He knew all about indoctrination.

  He’d enjoyed the previous evening. He’d continued talking to the trio of rapists as he’d worked, supplying them with fun facts about how long it would take them to die of their wounds. The answer was, even if they displayed superhuman strength, they’d all be dead before sunrise.

  He’d especially enjoyed disemboweling Rocana, their leader.

  People liked the food chain just fine, when they imagined themselves to be at its apex.

  It was then that he saw the fire.

  Black smoke billowed from both the café and the apartment above it. With little to no utilities, cooking efforts were haphazard at best. Grease fires were common in the slums, and they spread quickly. The café itself had been almost completely consumed and the buildings adjoining it would be next. Ceres crossed the street, to see if there was anything he could do.

  Justi was screaming and thrashing, the men restraining him fighting a losing battle as his determination outmatched their strength.

  Ceres was, quite frankly, surprised.

  “My mother is in there!” he screamed.

  “She’s gone now,” said the man, “there’s no sense in you going, too.”

  “She’s not! I know she’s alive!”

  Twisting like an eel, he broke free. Ceres grabbed him, and he spun around.

  “It’s my mother,” he repeated. “She’s the madam, in the brothel.”

  Of course she is.

  “Look at me,” said Ceres. “Right in the eye.”

  Justi did. Ceres knocked him out cold and sprinted toward the building.

  To know how to escape a fire, one had to first understand how it spread. For it to start, it needed three elements: a heat source to provide the initial catalyst, oxygen, and a combustible fuel source. Once ignition occurred, a fire continued to burn until it burned itself out—until it ran out of fuel, or oxygen, whichever came first. Fortunately, it did so according to certain predictable guidelines and the most important of these was that when it spread, it spread from the warmest areas into the coolest. Thus, here, it would spread from the kitchen out.

  Concrete didn’t burn. It was composed mostly of gravel and sand, which melted at temperatures far hotter than it was possible to achieve in a normal house fire. So, hand over hand, he began to climb the left side of the building, furthest away from the source of the blaze.

  The wall was pitted and crumbly, making his job easy. He really wished, though, that he’d gotten some sleep or, at the very least, something to eat. His arms and chest burned with the effort. Killing the target had proved difficult, and his energy reserves could have been better. His lungs were beginning to burn, too, and the concrete felt like sandpaper under his fingers. They’d start bleeding soon, from the constant abrasion. He hadn’t been able to wear gloves; in a place as hot as this, his jacket alone drew enough attention.

  He paused, took a breath, and kept climbing. Below, he could hear the faint din of people screaming.

  Glancing up, he saw that he was almost there. Ugly, foul-smelling black smoke belched from the hole that served as a window. He hoped someone was alive in there to save.

  Grunting, he hoisted himself up on his arms and swung inside, feet first.

  He saw her almost immediately. Thank God, this was getting old.

  That week in a brothel was looking better and better.

  She’d survived, paradoxically enough, because she was trapped under a collapsed beam. It had kept her down, pressed against the floor. Two women lay on the floor to her right, near the door, dead. In the average fire, smoke inhalation killed more people than actual flames.

  Still, if they didn’t get out of here, soon, they would be burned alive.

  Through the half open door shone a bright orange glow. Already the flames were licking around the edge of the doorframe; they’d be inside, soon. The wood was old and dry, perfect fuel.

  Dropping to his hands and knees, he crawled forward.

  The atmosphere on a typical M-class planet was somewhere between twenty and twenty-five percent oxygen; less than twelve percent oxygen, and a human being began to experience impaired judgment. Less than ten percent oxygen, and his brain began to fail.

  Fires ate oxygen and, at the same time, caused carbon monoxide.

  The good news was that the heat of the fire forced it to rise, leaving the air below reasonably breathable—until one ran out of oxygen, of course.

  The bad news was that the room would explode long before that happened.

  He lifted the woman’s eyelids and checked her pulse. She was groggy, but aware. He recognized her, of course, because he’d been interviewing her less than twenty-four hours before.

  Seeing him, her eyes widened.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” he told her calmly, holding her gaze, “but first I have to do something that’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt, but it’s going to allow me to move this beam. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” He stood up.

  It was going to hurt; it was going to break her ankle. But, on average, a house fire burned at 1100 degrees and, once the flames entered a room, reached 1100 degrees within 210 seconds. Ninety seconds later, the air in the room superheated to the point where everything in it spontaneously combusted. He’d seen that happen, even when no flames were present.

  He’d been here a minute already.

  The beam was lying directly across her; impossible to lever. One end was above her head, the other above her right ankle. Since her head wasn’t an option, he kicked out the debris beneath her foot and the beam crashed down. She screamed as her ankle bone shattered.

  Hopefully, if not an actual doctor, there was at least a bone setter in this wretched hellhole. Otherwise, he’d have to set
it himself.

  Grabbing an old orange crate that’d been serving as a chair for God only knew how long, he wedged it under the beam as far as he could and, taking hold of the beam and hoping his skin wouldn’t stick to it—it was goddamn hot—he rotated it off her. She rolled onto her back, sobbing and clutching vaguely at her ankle. It was already swelling into an ugly shape.

  He put his hand on her shoulder, and spoke as normally as he could. There was no reason to tell the woman that she was in imminent danger of exploding.

  “Now, you’re going to take three deep breaths. On the first two breaths, I want you to breathe in as deeply as you can, hold it for a second, and let it out. And then, on the third breath, I want you to hold it.” This would expand her lungs; the air above them was no longer breathable.

  She nodded again, too terrified to respond, and did as she was told.

  The door frame exploded inward in a shower of sparks, and fire belched into the room. He felt the skin on his face bake, and wondered if his hair was on fire. The ceiling above them had turned into an inferno, with billowing curtains of orange and red flame that looked almost like soft, downy bed sheets waving in the breeze.

  He grabbed her and, running for the window, leapt.

  They sailed through space, landing on a makeshift awning that promptly collapsed under their weight.

  The poles that’d been holding up the tarp snapped inward, and they crashed down onto a surprised cow.

  Justi’s mother shrieked as she banged her injured ankle.

  Hearing her, Justi ran over. He was shrieking just as loudly, an ear-splitting noise that sounded like nails on a chalkboard and made Ceres wince. They hugged each other, exclaiming over the fact that they were both still alive, and then a third person joined them. This sad, white-haired bag of a man was presumably Justi’s father. Ceres stood off to the side, catching his breath and dusting himself off. He looked, he realized, quite disreputable.

  And then suddenly they were hugging him, and shrieking. He hated hugging.

  “Thank you,” repeated Justi, apparently not caring that he had a black eye.