you spilled my egg. i needed that egg.

Jiao laid Kôichi down in the back seat of the car, tucking the coat in to keep out the cold air. “You all right?”

Kôichi nodded.

Jiao drove slowly, avoiding every inconsistency in the pavement and casually drifting though every red light on the deserted street. “I’m going to stay with you for a few days, at least until you stop bleeding.”

Kôichi didn’t feel like he could get the breath together for a single word, but he managed to force of a rough, “Thanks.”

The brakes creaked eerily as Jiao parked beside Kôichi’s apartment complex. He shut the engine off, and then sat back, gripping the wheel loosely as if he was forcing himself to stay in the car as long as it took to say what needed to be said. Finally, he looked up into the rear-view mirror, and let their eyes lock in the glass, reminding himself that it was only a reflection. “I do trust you,” he said to the dark, still picture of his friend, “And I'm sorry.”

On the bed lay the old bottle of sour whiskey, a dishtowel, a roll of gauze, a long-expired tube of Neosporin, and Jiao’s thin switchblade. In his hand, Jiao held a syringe of morphine to kill the pain while he worked. He caught Kôichi’s eye, and then closed his fingers around the glass cylinder. The glass cracked audibly. Jiao opened his hand and let the reddened shards tumble into the trash can.

Jiao soaked the rag in whiskey and wiped down his switchblade, and then shoved the bitter tasting dishcloth into Kôichi’s mouth. Thoughtfully, he traced patterns in the swollen perimeter of Kôichi’s bullet wound.

“Do you think I’m too cruel?” he asked casually. “Do you deserve this?”

Kôichi smiled as much as the gag would allow, looking at Jiao as if to say, “Your woman.”

Jiao plunged the knife into Kôichi’s shoulder. Within a very long, agonizing seven minutes and eighteen seconds, he worked the bullet out. Blood flowed out of Kôichi’s shoulder like a tap. His face was streaked with sweat and an unhealthy darkness of broken blood vessels had started around his eyes. Without warning, Jiao splashed some whiskey onto the wound. Kôichi gasped, choking on the gag. He emptied the tube of antiseptic into the bullet hole, stuffed a wad of gauze into it, and bandaged it tightly. Kôichi had turned his head away, his teeth clenched and his black lashes matted with wetness. His hand, which had clutch the pillow before, now lay limply at his side, pale and shaking faintly. Jiao’s arms were stained with blood up past his wrists.

He turned his back to Kôichi and sat down on the edge of the bed, head down and shoulders slumped tiredly. “It wasn’t your fault, was it?” he asked, and then remembered that Kôichi was still gagged. He removed the cloth gently, pressing his fingers into Kôichi’s shoulder to stem the bleeding while he coughed. Removing his coat and wrapping Kôichi in it, he lifted him carefully and carried him to the door. Xiùlán sprang up to open it for them.

“I'm staying with him for a couple days. Do it before I get back.” His tone left no need for a threat.

Xiùlán must have heard Jiao dragging Kôichi up the concrete stairs to the second floor. She was waiting with the door open and a furrowed brow.

“Strip the sheets off the bed and get some towels,” he ordered, carrying a now semi-conscious Kôichi inside and sitting him down on the mattress. He wrestled Kôichi’s limp body out of his coat, his button-down, and his now crimson undershirt, then dragged him onto the bed, laying him on his back and propping the left side of his body up on two pillows. Xiùlán sat down on the edge of the bed and cast her sympathetic gaze on Kôichi. Jiao left to assemble a makeshift first-aid kit.

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah...I think so.”

“He says that if I hit nine months, he’ll shoot me," she whispered.

“So take care of it,” Kôichi suggested tersely, his voice hoarse with pain.

“Damn it, I can’t do that! You know I can’t. Please, just help me get out.”

“You can’t leave the Chi-long. You’ve been inside a long time. You know how things work.”

“I know we could do it,” she pleaded, her voice thick with tears. “I want you to come with me. You can’t fool me me, Kôichi, I know you want out. You’re not a killer. You know Jiao won’t be on your side forever. He’s going to kill us both, one of these days,” she said, leaning close and speaking very softly. “Let’s just disappear together. We’ll go to Earth, settle down, raise our baby...never come back.”

When Jiao walked in, her lips were a breath away from Kôichi’s. Xiùlán stood quickly and bowed her head, feigning shame when her trembling hands showed only terror. Kôichi had no doubt that Xiùlán’s prediction was about to come true.

Jiao dumped his supplies on the bed. “Leave.”

Xiùlán obeyed unquestioningly.

Kôichi dropped to his stomach. Jiao rolled to the side, into the shadows beneath a shop’s awning.

Somewhere behind Kôichi, a blast of gunfire erupted. Jiao was back on his feet in an instant. He took down the would-be- sniper with a single blind shot into the dark just beyond a nearby streetlamp. Suddenly, the air was thrumming with gunfire. Kôichi and Jiao took up a fighting stance, back to back, their shoulder blades grinding together as they gunned down man after man.

Jiao was unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat, and he was deadly shot, but gunfights had never been his style. Against so many opponents, he was in over his head. Above the piercing gunfire, Kôichi heard a sharp clang of metal and a pained gasp as someone shot Jiao’s gun out of his hand. Kôichi shoved his partner back with his shoulder, pressing him into the brick storefront behind them and shielding him from the rain of bullets.

Sensing that they had taken the upper hand, the remaining assailants stepped closer into the colored light. They weren’t syndicate grade, by any means, just dirty gang members looking for a party, but there were too many of them. Kôichi knew that he and Jiao had brought down at least ten, and he counted six still standing. Whether by their lack of skill or Kôichi’s luck, he took down three without a problem, but the fourth, the sharpshooter who’d disarmed Jiao, nearly hit his mark. Kôichi didn’t so much feel as hear the dull thud of the bullet as it pierced his shoulder. The sharpshooter stepped closer, looking for a clear shot to finish him off, but Kôichi hadn’t let his guard down yet. His attacker fell back against one of his buddies, blood splattering on the face of the man behind him as the bullet made its gruesome exit through the back of his skull.

The last two standing edged in as Kôichi stumbled back against Jiao and lose his footing. A deep graze in the left forearm finished Kôichi off, and his gun hit concrete. Jiao slid out from behind his partner, a throwing knife in each hand. He released them simultaneously, and both found their mark. The men fell to the pavement, blood spraying from their lips and blades buried deep in the columns of their necks. Beautiful work.

Jiao gathered up his knives and the two guns, then turned his attention back to Kôichi, who was slouched against the wall as if he was just lounging there, except for a sheen of cool sweat on his forehead and his shallow breathing. Jiao rushed to him, yanked aside the collar of his coat and tore through the first three buttons of his shirt. He helped his partner shuffle forward into the light so that he could check for an exit wound. There wasn’t one. Already, his hands were slick with warm blood. “They hit something big,” he said sympathetically. “Let’s get you home.”

He slung Kôichi’s uninjured arm over his shoulders and walked with him, very slowly, back to the car.

When the balls stopped clacking, the dark bar was silent. Kôichi heard fabric rustle as Jiao dug in his pockets for his cigs. Guiltily, he pulled the missing pack out of his sleeve and slid them across the green felt table. Jiao lit one with a low laugh. “Little bandit.”

Kôichi knew how dangerous Jiao was. The Glock, the switchblade, those three hidden throwing knives—they were dangerous in and of themselves, but the real threat was some disease, some gross degeneration, some glitch in the brain of the man who carried them. He was too eager to put them to use. Kôichi followed him out into the dark street, the pavement beneath his shoes grimy with a film of red sand neglected by the cleanup crews. Jiao’s insanity didn’t seem like something he should be able to see past, and yet, there he was, playing pool with him on a Friday night, slipping a hand into his coat to swipe a pack of cigarettes, fishing out car keys to drive him home. It was enough to make a man wonder about his own sanity. Was he like Jiao? Was he that ruthless killer? God, was that him?

Was it really such a shame if it was?

“Jiao.”

Kôichi stopped, his shoes grinding against the sidewalk as he stood there, trembling like the eight ball, a breath away from falling into that little spot of darkness.

Jiao looked over his shoulder at his motionless partner. The neon-lined streets turned his grey hair into a juxtaposition of charcoal shadows and gleaming, tinted whites.

Kôichi couldn’t remember what he’d intended to say. His mind was a fit of stammers. Then, just as words began to come together in a sentence, a soft command from Jiao broke the tension.

“Down.”

Three ball, corner pocket. The five ball nudges it in, only to come to a sudden stop on the edge, where it wobbled teasingly for a few long seconds. Jiao was unconcerned. He watched Kôichi with cold scrutiny. Kôichi took the shot his partner had all but set up.

“You refused her.”

The five ball clattered into the hold.

Jiao smiled as Kôichi looked up from the table, surprised. “For a spy, she’s not hard to read.”

Kôichi shrugged, collecting himself quickly. “She’s your woman.”

“I hope you’re not looking for my trust.”

“Now why would I do something stupid like that?” Kôichi chuckled, tossing him the chalk.

“Do me a favour, Kôichi.”

“Maybe,” he smirked.

“Don’t trust her, either.”

Kôichi said nothing, but gave Jiao a brief nod of assurance. Jiao smiled at him—it was a new smile, one that Kôichi had never been lucky enough to see. There was something friendly about it, something warm, loving, even trusting. “I should tell you, you’re the only person I’ve known that I haven’t wanted to kill.”

“Shit, Jiao,” Kôichi laughed uncomfortably. “Coming from you, that’s practically a marriage proposal.”

That unprecedented smile widened a little.

Kôichi turned away and leaned back lazily against the table, looking for anything to stare at but Jiao’s face. “But...thanks.”

Jiao took his shot, and watched as the lone eight ball floated across the table and into the corner pocket. Game over. He caught the cue ball on the brink of the side pocket with a smirk.

An hour passed, but the sandstorm was slow to die down. The opaque sand-shields had automatically lowered over the windows, leaving the room pitch dark as dawn approached outside. The couch reminded Kôichi of a bed of nails with too few nails but, finally, lulled by the low humming of the wind, he fell asleep.

When he woke, it was noon and silent. The shields were raised and the room was lit dimly bathed in sunlight. The storm was over, but a quick glance outside revealed only deserted streets. The storm warning must have still been in effect. Lighting a fresh cigarette, he considered just borrowing a scarf and walking back to his own apartment. Then, Xiùlán’s soft voice found its way out of the bedroom through the half-open door. Kôichi told himself he wouldn’t listen.

“I can’t.”

“Bullshit.”

“Please don’t make me do this.”

Kôichi heard a gun cock in the bedroom. The reflection in the windowpane showed the cracked door, and beyond it, Jiao shoved Xiùlán against the wall, pressing his pistol against her still-flat abdomen. “If you don’t,” he whispered harshly, “I will.”

The two stood like that for a moment as she desperately tried to gauge him as carefully as anyone at gunpoint would, but Jiao soon turned away, leaving her to slump tiredly against the wall.

Suddenly, her eyes were on his, red with drying tears and begging pitifully. Her lips barely moved, but Kôichi heard the words like she’d screamed them in his ear.

“Help me.”

Kôichi considered the man in the other room. Jiao may have been a cold-hearted murderer, but he’d always be his friend. He didn’t look away from the window. Almost imperceptibly, Kôichi shook his head.

Jiao opened the door enough to admit Kôichi’s narrow frame, and then quickly locked the deadbolt. Jiao looked like he’d been in bed—no surprise, the clock on the countertop read 3:57 AM. Kôichi could see his partner’s shirt cast haphazardly in the bedroom doorway. Jiao’s belt hung loosely from his unbuttoned, half-zipped dress pants as if he’d only just yanked them on. “What?”

“No hit,” Kôichi shrugged. “Target died in his sleep last night. I’d call it a trick, but he was eighty nine and morbidly obese.”
Jiao cursed tonelessly.

Kôichi smiled and tossed him a thick roll of bills. “Don’t grind your teeth, buddy. Sheng-yue doubled the advance. He’s in a great mood.”

Jiao weighed the cash in one hand. “No doubt.” He took a bottle of whiskey from his desk and poured two shots. Kôichi accepted the proffered liquor gratefully and drank it slowly, letting it burn the back of his throat.

From where he stood, Koichi could see into the small bedroom. Xiùlán was sleeping there, sprawled gracefully on her back. The glow of streetlamps had creeping in though the dusty blinds made her tangled hair into a halo of black-light. She’d changed so much in the last year. Her long hair, her slender waist, her downcast gaze – they were only the outward signs of her condition. Jiao had stripped away all the confidence, the drive, the happiness that had been there once, leaving only what was underneath, all the things she’d spent years training herself to hide. She was too warm, too gentle, too young to belong in that cold apartment.

Kôichi watched her out of the corner of his eye, aware that Jiao was watching him, as well. He felt the cool metal of the Glock press against his cheek. Jiao turned Kôichi’s head until their eyes met.

“Isn’t she lovely?"

"You wouldn't keep her around if she wasn't," Kôichi smiled.

“Maybe she’s lovely enough to make you forget what I’ll do to you if you ever look at her like that again.”

“Sheng-yue would be pretty pissed if you killed me. He doesn’t like losing sharp-shooters.”

“You would mind if I killed her,” Jiao said. “You’ve waited for a chance to have her since the moment you saw her.”

Kôichi scoffed. “What, you think I’m in love with her?”

“Of course not. You know there’s no such thing as love.”

A sharp crackling at the window pane drew their attention. Jiao went to his desk and turned up the old radio.

“…until further notice….Severe weather report. Sandstorm from the northwest. Winds at thirty-five kilometers per hour. Please take shelter until further notice….Severe weather—“

Outside, a siren wailed dully, drowned in the wind. Kôichi lit a cigarette, sighing.

“Sleep on the couch, if it lasts long,” said Jiao, as if they’d never mentioned Xiùlán. Jiao put the safety back on his gun and laid it on his desk. “She says she’s pregnant.”

“Has she been tested?”

“Positive.”

“What, does she want to keep it or something?” Kôichi asked around his cigarette.

“If she wanted to keep it, she would never have told me.” He studied his partner’s face bemusedly. “Are you upset? I am forcing her to murder her baby, after all.”

Kôichi took an unhealthily long drag. A little tension left his shoulders. “She’s your woman. Hell, it’s your kid. None of my business what you do with them.”

[1 year later.]

Kôichi had never thought of Jiao as someone who needed a home, much less as someone who returned home every night to eat and sleep like other humans. Kôichi and Jiao had grown up together on the streets of Mars. They were boys who had become men in the service of the Chi-long Syndicate. They were partners, comrades, and yet, after bleeding beside him, drinking with him, cutting bullets out of him, and lighting cigarettes for him for seven years, there were still times when he couldn't find a trace of humanity in Jiao. Killing came too easily to him.

Kôichi had found himself mulling over this fact every time he'd stood on the thresh hold of that once-white door with the tarnished brass plate. Eleven thirteen B. Seventh door down on the second floor of the East District Complex on the edge of the worst slum of in New Tokyo on Mars. He stared for a moment at the row of black scuff marks at the bottom of the door, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his hair wild from the cold rain, and then kicked twice, adding two more. Through the paper thin wall, he heard the bed creak. Soft steps made by bare feet on the carpet - and the floorboards creaked beneath. A pause. Kôichi heard, or imagined that he could hear Jiao's soft voice as he murmured, "Go back to sleep." Footsteps again, and the metallic slap of a magazine sliding into place, followed by the dangerous little click as the safety came off Jiao's beat-up Glock. The door opened all of eight inches—enough to reveal a thin line of Jiao's porcelain face, obscured by his messy hair, grey at twenty-six, and the black barrel of a cocked gun. Kôichi smiled. "Hey."

Jiao stowed his gun and strode away with a disgusted sneer on his face, tossing the cell carelessly over his shoulder for Kôichi to catch. Kôichi finally got a grip on his phone after juggling it for a couple nerve-racking seconds. He smiled wryly at the driver—Xiùlán, he reminded himself—wondering how her unusual prettiness hadn’t occurred to him before.

“He’s not pissed at you,” he assured her, unsure that it was true. “He’s pissed at Sheng-yue. He raised Jiao since he found him when he was eight and he knows exactly how to push his buttons. It’s pretty funny, once you learn to recognize when it’s a good day to stay out of Jiao’s way and when it’s a good day to give him a hug. Here’s a hint; he’s not much of a hugger.”

Xiùlán smiled, unfazed. “I’ve been inside a long time. It’s pretty hard to hurt my feelings.”

“Where are you from? I mean, were you born on Mars?”

“My mother was a spy for the Sai-Zhou on Venus. My father was an informant for the Chi-long. Sheng-yue knew him very well.”

“Mixed heritage,” Kôichi mused, leading her up to Jiao’s floor. “That’s interesting. So, I hear you’ve gotta be rich to live on Venus. It’s a pretty classy planet. That’s where Sheng-yue found Jiao, just outside New Hong Kong. Story goes, he’d already killed more men at the age of eight than the Chi-long’s best sweeper, so Sheng-yue decided to foster him.”

“I was born in New Hong Kong. It was beautiful there.”

“Jiao wouldn’t agree, but, then again, Jiao had the view from the gutter.”

“I like him.”

Kôichi laughed nervously. “What, already?”

“I’m a good judge of character.”

“Just be careful,” Kôichi warned, opening the door for her.

Jiao did take Xiùlán out for a drink that evening. She stayed with him that night. In the morning, he didn’t tell her to leave.

“Jiao, what the—“

“A woman,” Jiao growled dangerously, raising his Glock again, clearly embarrassed that he’d fallen for the disguise. “A goddamned woman, and she says she looking for work.”

“Actually, I’ve just been hired,” the driver corrected in an entirely new, feminine voice. “Sheng-yue sent me. He said that if I could fool you for ten minutes, he’d call me the best in the business.”

Jiao didn’t need to ask. Kôichi had already whipped out his cell and called Sheng-yue.

Sheng-yue picked up immediately. “Hello, Kôichi!” came his overly cheerful greeting. “How was the job? Did you and Jiao kill everyone I asked you to kill?” He sounded like he was talking to a six-year-old.

“Sure.”

“And?”

“And Jiao wants to know if you sent the gender-bender.”

“Oh!” chuckled Sheng-yue. “Little Xiùlán! Isn’t she a gem? I just knew Jiao would like her.”

“He’s got a gun to her head right now, but, yeah, other than that, they hit it off great.”

Jiao, for his part, still hasn’t stopped seething. He didn’t like being shown up. Everyone knew that insulting him wasn’t the safest sport. To the untrained eye, he didn’t really seem too angry, but Kôichi knew exactly what to look for; white knuckles, relaxed, easy posture, colder eyes than usual. Hesitantly, Kôichi held the phone out to him. “Jiao?”

“What?” he answered quietly, in a tone that implied that the only reason he hadn’t pulled the trigger already was so that he could enjoy the anticipation of Xiùlán’s death just a little longer.

“He wants to talk to you.”

Jiao had no choice but to accept the phone. “Yes, sir?”

“Jiao, darling! Did you have fun at the job? Look, boy, don’t take this too hard. She really is very good. She even fooled me, for God’s sake! And what’s more, she’s working for us!” Sheng-yue was clearly excited about his new employee. “Jiao, I know that if you just loosen up and have a drink with her, you’ll find out that she’s just spectacular. You’ll be glad you didn’t shoot her, I promise.” Sheng-yue hung up, probably because he knew the odds in favour of Jiao dignifying that with a response.

Jiao leaned forward. “Who do you work for, boy?” he whispered in the man’s ear.

“The Sai-Zhou,” he answered, his eyes steady and his hands relaxed against the wheel.

“They disintegrated four years ago,” Jiao reminded him, pressing the barrel firmly into the top of the driver’s spine, forcing his head down.

“That’s why I came to put in my application with the Chi-long.”

“Get out of the car. Now.”

The man stepped out without a fight and allowed Jiao to kick his feet apart. Kôichi came around immediately, his pistol trained on the driver. “What are you, kid? A numbers runner? Package boy?” he questioned as Jiao began to search the man’s coat, confiscating a loaded Brazilian Zamorana.

“Spy,” he answered casually as Jiao patted him down roughly.

“Well,” Jiao scoffed. “Your cover was really shi—” He stopped searching, his hands lingering on the driver’s chest. Then, in one movement, he untucked the man’s shirt, took out his knife, and shoved it underneath the fabric. Kôichi heard a snap as the blade cut through a thick elastic band underneath, and suddenly, the driver looked very different.

Kôichi slept on the flight back to Beijing. Sheng-yue had sent his private jet for them, so there was none of the usual hassle of hiding the guns, knives, drugs, hand-grenades

Outside, the car was waiting with the engine hot. "Back to your hotel?" asked the driver.

"New Tokyo, East District Complex," answered Kôichi.

All three were silent during the twenty minute ride. Back at the complex, Kôichi barely waited for the car to stop before jumping out. Jiao remained inside. Kôichi was just about to tap on the glass, just to irk his stiff partner, but Jiao drew out his Type 68 and pressed it against the base of the driver’s skull.

Two cars met at the drop point. Out of one stepped Jiao and Kôichi, and three young enforcers looking to become assassins left the other, pulling pistols from their coats. The address their informant had reported wasn't much to look at - at best, it was a windowless box of mud with an uncommon stench, but the tip was correct; the single door on the side left no escape routes. There were eleven men surrounding the perimeter (Koichi wondered if they had some correlation with the reek) and they were hard to spot. They were dressed like the rest of Escampada’s citizens, with dirty jeans and sweat-stained t-shirts, but an ear-bud on the left side and a minute microphone on the collar were enough for quick identification.

Jiao and Kôichi were well hidden in the shadows of the adjacent building, watching six of the eleven men lounging against the wall, smoking what Kôichi soon realized was the source of the smell.

With a discreet nod, Jiao-long signaled that Kôichi should cut their transmissions. Kôichi took out his little pocket computer and, after some swift typing on the key-pad, the guards started to tap their radios. From their vantage point, Jiao and Kôichi could hear the faint whisper of static coming from the men’s ear-buds. Jiao produced a capsule no larger than a pill and crushed it between his fingers, then tossed it toward the six men and. In a few seconds and without a single cough, all six fell to the ground, unconscious. Jiao tied a bandana around his mouth and nose, though most of the drug had already dispersed, and strode forward, drawing out his switchblade. Kôichi timed him. He’d slit all six throats in twenty one seconds. For Jiao, that was moving at a leisurely pace. He drew the knife through their skin slowly, forcefully, the corners of his lips curling upward slightly as the blood spilled from the wounds in torrents.

The young assassins on the other side of the building left something to be desired; Jiao and Kôichi overheard a sharp gasp as one of the guards died and the choked gurgle of a man whose throat hadn’t been cut deeply enough, but Jiao’s work had left no one to hear.

The five assassins met at the single side door, their pistols cocked and raised. "Sixteen bodies?" asked one of the boys. Kôichi nodded, and then kicked down the door.

The unceasing roar of gunfire lasted for less than a minute. It soon dwindled to the occasional shot and the pitiful begging of the last boss living as he struggled to move his mangled arm fast enough to retrieve his gun. Jiao knelt beside him for a few minutes, watching him writhe, and then stood again and pressed the heel of his beat up cowboy boot into the man's windpipe, harder and harder until, with a quick twist of his foot, the spine gave way with a wet snap. Jiao was only an assassin when it came to other hit-men and small-fries. When it came to the bosses, he was an executioner.

Kôichi had a lucky little burn on his jaw where a bullet had whizzed past, and one of the boys was down with a bullet in the thigh, but the job was done, and it was done real clean, as far as Kôichi was concerned.

"Should we mop up?" asked one of the boys, looking around the headquarters cum slaughterhouse with a naïve expression of awe.

"Leave them for their own boys to find. They're not our problem," said Jiao. The two uninjured boys carried their partner back to the car, leaving Jiao and Kôichi alone inside the building, which was already beginning to smell like blood congealing in a mud-brick oven.

Jiao strode about lazily, retrieving his knives, wiping them off on a handkerchief he found in the last boss' pocket. Stowing them back in their proper place on his belt, he turned to Kôichi, smiling sincerely. "I love this job."

“Yeah,” said Kôichi, gingerly prodding the tender burn. “It’s all shits and giggles until it starts to suck.”

Jiao licked his palm and patted his partner’s cheek roughly, rubbing a little spit into the burn. “So don’t get shot.”

“I don’t care if I get shot, as long as I get paid,” he said, slapping Jiao’s hand away. “And as long as you don’t stick your fucking fingers in it!”

They left the country in high spirits that afternoon.

The job went down on a cool Monday morning in April, in a slum called Escampada. It was a place no different from the rest of post-World War III planet Earth; lawless and rank with the smell of gasoline and decaying meat, filled with half-demolished buildings and rubble. Young people ran barefoot through the cracked concrete streets. The old ones huddled inside or wandered dazedly, as if a part of their deteriorating brains were still in the dark of a fallout shelter, waiting for the sirens to wind down into silence.

Jiao-long and Kôichi had checked in at the cheapest hotel in town at midnight on Sunday. It turned out to be nothing but a filthy brothel, and neither one of them had any interest in sleeping in one of the beds. They spent the night waiting silently for their informant's call, slouching on a sagging red couch in what was meant to be the lobby, chain-smoking their way through a pack of cigarettes each so that they didn't have to taste the thick air of the whorehouse.

Jiao watched the underage prostitutes coming and going with his signature, unchanging expression that bordered on both enthrallment and repulsion. Kôichi, usually restless and bored, sat still for once in his life and, with half-lidded brown eyes, he studied the plumes of smoke as he exhaled them. Not even Jiao, who knew him best, could tell what his partner had on his mind.

For their part, the girls and the manager left them alone. Something about them made it clear as day that they were syndicate members; not empty suits or package boys, but the dangerous kind. It might have been Kôichi’s bad habit of adjusting his oversized earpiece, or the raised, white scar obstructing his right hand where a bullet had passed straight though as punishment for not cooperating with an interrogator. Maybe it was the threatening way Jiao fidgeted with the safety of the Korean-made Type 68 in his coat pocket, or the tattoo of the thin Chinese dragon wrapped alluringly around the slender length of his index finger—a symbol which no one outside the Chi-long crime syndicate dared to advertise.

If some unwise bystander cared to read the two closely, they might have seen that sparkle in their eyes of dark anticipation, the mark of assassins watching the clock, counting the seconds until a big shootout. The head of the Chi-long, Xi Sheng-yue, would never send anybody but his own boys, his protégés on a job like this. They were out to assassinate the last eight members of La Telaraña, an aging syndicate with a monopoly on every shit-hole in the West that no one else was willing to claim. They were the last of the competition in the golden age, still standing only because they hadn't had enough power to threaten the Chi-long in twenty years, but as Sheng-yue brought the syndicate to the height of its power, eliminating La Telaraña had suddenly become an affordable luxury. If the Chi-long wiped them out, they would be the first crime syndicate to do the impossible; they would have infiltrated every class. They would employ every citizen on the ruined planet from the generous high society down to the whores and mercenaries who would seduce or slaughter anybody for a scrap of meat.

The call came at six thirty-six. Kôichi cast a side-long glance at his partner as Jiao listened intently to the terse voice between each period of static crackling from his communicator.

"Eight targets, nineteen guards, no escape routes. We'll have your driver there in five."

They stood up, stiff and aching after six hours on the couch springs. Kôichi, stretching with his uniquely unintentional grace and cracking his long neck, followed Jiao out the door and into the street, laying a tip on the grimy counter as he left.

The street was empty and silent, and, somewhere between Escampada's smog and the synthetic atmosphere, dawn was spreading through the sky one cloud at a time. You could never really say that the weather on Earth was nice, anymore, but you could sure as hell guess when the directors at the Global Climate Center in Tokyo were in a good mood.

Kôichi and Jiao each loaded their pair of automatics with deep, satisfying clicks. Jiao turned to look at his partner. He'd never honored anyone but Kôichi with a look like that one. He'd never regarded anyone else as his equal, as a comrade. Kôichi returned the gesture, not missing the distant glimmer of respect in Jiao's eyes. Jiao reached out, plucked the cigarette from Kôichi's mouth and took a long drag, burning it to the filter as Kôichi watched. He blew out the thin stream of smoke in something like a contented sigh.

"Beautiful morning," he commented. Since he was feeling particularly generous that day, he let Kôichi catch him smiling, just a little.

Behind his lingering smile, Kôichi felt sick. Somewhere deep inside him, behind the necessary persona of the murderer, he shuddered. The elation he could already feel balling up in the pit of his gut, the sadistic smirk that crept onto his face, a face that should have known better — it scared him. A black car coasted easily to a stop on the gravel road in from of them.

So anyway...I needed somewhere to host my little Cowboy Bebop Tribute "Gun Street Girl."  I'll be posting little sippets as I write them, so, it'll look like it's on the page backwards, I guess but you;ll just have to figure out how to read from oldest to newest.

Yeah, so my boyfriend made a kick-ass new layout, so I had to make one, too.  The result?  Not as kick-ass, but good enough for me.