Chapter 2: Fire on the Ice

She was working alone now, and though she had trained extensively for such a moment it was a bit unnerving to be going against someone with the reputation of Michael Christiansen. They said he was unpredictable, highly determined, and could improvise with almost anything at hand. They also said he was capable of ruthlessness that would make a Nazi blanche.
Regardless of his skills he had a serious weakness, that of women. He would hesitate and that would allow her to strike, a moment’s pause being all that would be necessary to complete the mission. That she was being trusted to accomplish it on her own spoke volumes about her own progress.
Still, she’d be less than human to not feel some reservations. The remedy to that, she knew, was only a phone call away. It was in her hand and the speed-dial keyed, even as her eyes remained locked on Christiansen for any sign of awareness of her presence. He had spotted her before and forced her to break contact, a moment’s lapse in caution that she had been punished severely for. Her body still ached from it, but her mind was now focused on success.
“Status?”
“Eyes on target. Estimate thirty minutes or so until contact.”
“Proceed as planned. We’ll deal with our end in twenty.”
“Understood, sir.”
The phone went back into her suit pocket and her hand traveled to her belt, feeling the handle of the knife hidden there under her jacket. Michael Christiansen would die in less than an hour.

“Inspector,” Michael nodded at the man as he settled into the booth with his coffee, eyes scanning the cafe for any signs of a tail.
“Michael. I wish I had good news but things didn’t exactly shape up like we hoped.” 
He slid a folder across the table to Michael and then sipped his coffee as Michael glanced over it quickly.
“Both parents are dead... Double suicide, if the French police are anything resembling competent. Two weeks after the police here called and said there was no hope of finding her. The father’s coworkers found them in bed, pills on the nightstand. Goddamned Greek tragedy...”
The details were in the report, Michael saw. It wasn’t the work of psychos or thieves, but of despair. “What the hell am I supposed to tell the girl? She already blames herself for what happened to her, how is she going to take this?”
Peters only shrugged and lit up a cigarette, glad that he wouldn’t be the one trying to find the words, though the task was not one he felt was to be taken lightly. He didn’t envy his friend at all. 
“Shit.” Michael rubbed his eyes and pushed away the fatigue he was already feeling. It was going to be tough, but he had learned from experience that hiding the truth only made for more pain later. “Alright, I’m going to take care of this. Thanks for the info.”
“I’m taking the family out to my cousin’s farm in the country for a few weeks. I’m not liking the way things have been feeling at headquarters lately.”
Christiansen nodded and stood to leave. “Good. Take care of them, Inspector, and take care of yourself.”
“Always do.”

The wind chilled considerably with the impending storm’s approach, and there was the feeling of a lot of rain in the air. It was going to be a long, solemn night for sure. As if sensing this, the streets had cleared some and Michael’s pace through the winding course was quicker than he had expected. 
He had just made it to a covered alleyway when the rain began falling in earnest, forcing him to seek cover in the darkened tunnel. His lips muttered a silent curse at himself for not checking the weather before leaving but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be this heavy after the leading edge of the front passed by. He’d just wait until it slacked to a drizzle before continuing on.
A woman sought cover as well, her suit and glasses all but soaked from her dashing across the street from a park. Her embarrassed smile as she took off the glasses and tried futilely to dry them on her soaked blouse settled Michael’s suddenly alert mind, allowing him to relax and observe the woman in his usual way.
The dark blue suit was the common style for the business-types in the city, though her aura seemed to be one of carelessness or inexperience, leading him to believe her more of a secretary type than a leading businesswoman. The black stockings covered long, shapely legs, and the heels put her almost to his height. Brown eyes glanced at him through the wet lenses of her designer half-frame glasses, though they showed only a little wariness at the man sharing the shelter with her. Fine black hair and slightly narrowed eyes spoke of a partly Asian background, though he could not be certain of that. Overall, she was a rather attractive woman in her mid twenties, someone he could not really complain about sharing a place out of the rain with.
“It’s really pouring now.”
The woman looked up immediately at his speaking Dutch, a nervous smile and nod coming in response. She turned her attention away immediately, an indication that she really wasn’t interested in conversation with him. 
“I’m getting old, I guess” was Michael’s next thought. It had been a long time that an attractive woman had not at least checked him out when he’d tried to converse. It was yet another sign that maybe he should settle down finally. He chose to respect her privacy and pulled out his phone, dialing the apartment’s number to let them know he was going to be late. 
The phone rang, and rang, and rang. By the fifth ring he was getting impatient. By the ninth, his concern was visible on his face, enough so that the woman turned to face him, her face void of emotion.
“They won’t answer, you know. My friends have seen to that.”
Michael’s eyes locked onto the woman’s, realizing what his mind had been trying to scream at him for the past ten minutes. She wasn’t carrying a briefcase, or purse, or anything that the average woman should be. The eyes were the ones he had noticed before, her face now filling in the void of his memory from that moment, bringing back a little of the fear he had felt. Her words to him in Italian only deepened his concern.
“Who are you?”
“Your assassin.”
She moved in a flash, a knife swinging out as she closed the ten feet between them and cutting the collar of his jacket as he narrowly dodged. The knife flipped in her hand and swung back to stab him in an almost fluid motion and he swung his left arm up to block, drawing his gun with his right, retaining it at his gut and firing off three rounds into her chest. 
The forty-caliber rounds hit hard, staggering her back slightly and surprising her enough to make her pause. Her hand went to the wound, but there was no shock on her face from being injured nor wince from the pain. There was only a look of curiosity that Michael knew well enough.
“You’re one of them... A third generation cyborg.”
“Very astute. You’re faster than I was told to expect.”
Michael was almost dragged down by despair. His chances of living through the next five minutes were slim to none. “I never tell anyone everything about me. I’ve always got something left up my sleeve.”
Her eyes were made to be beautiful, he could tell, but they could not hide the murderous intent behind them. “I doubt it’ll be enough to save you.”
She struck again with the knife, faster than he could react with the pistol, and the blade sliced into his gun hand, cutting his control of his fingers and sending the gun to the alley floor. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her in close, driving his elbow into her face, only to feel the painful jar of hitting the titanium reinforcement of her skull, numbing the nerve in his own arm as she used her considerable strength to drive the knife into his side. A quick spin put her outside of his arms and she drove her fist into the back of his right shoulder, cracking the weakened place where he had been shot by Ian Amherst two years before. 
Michael screamed in pain, the stars in his vision clearing only long enough for him to watch as she flipped him over and drove her heel into his weakened ribs. She knew every weak point from his time with the Social Welfare Agency and was using them to her advantage just as he himself would. There was no doubt that she was stronger, faster, and possibly more lethal than he was, but a moment of clarity reminded him that she might not be as smart. 
His foot kicked out and pushed off the nearby wall, propelling him the few feet needed to lay his left hand on the pistol he had dropped. She lunged to stop him but he was a beat ahead of her, grabbing it and rolling over towards it, jamming the knife further in his side but clearing her stomping foot enough to point shoot the gun with his left hand, striking her in the face and neck with two rounds. 
The woman staggered back against the wall and grasped her face, cyborg blood spilling out onto her white blouse from her neck wound. Her pause allowed Michael to get to his feet, gasping from the pain of the knife in his side, and aim the gun at her head. Her eyes locked onto his but showed no fear.
There were a lot of questions he could have asked her but his mind quickly dismissed them as being something he could think his way through. There was only one he needed, really.
“Why now? Why after two years is Lorenzo looking to end my life? You’re proof positive that the information I took barely slowed things down, so there is no reason to kill me.”
Her eyes showed her moment of thought as to whether she had that answer, but it was only a moment, and the hostile look regained its hold on her face. 
“You don’t know... No, I suppose you wouldn’t. You’re just doing the job.” Michael started walking backwards down the alley, never taking his pistol off of her eyes. “Take my advice, kid: never come after me again. Mercy is something that I can no longer afford to hand out.”
The shot cracked down the length of the alley, followed immediately by the thump of the cyborg’s body, her face a bloody wreck from the shots, the second going through her left eye. He was taking no chances with her following him, not in his wounded state. 
The pain was considerable, though he could still walk almost upright. It was only a few hundred feet to the nearest subway and he figured he could make it, but his body told him otherwise, weakening suddenly at the knees and sending him falling to the sidewalk. He had to make it back to the apartment but the strength simply was not there. He was going to die in the gutter in the rain. Wasn’t that interesting? Wasn’t that how Edgar Allen Poe wound up?
The rain was cold on his face and the street was deserted now that the rain was almost torrential, leaving Michael little hope of someone helping him. There simply weren’t any good Samaritans in Europe anymore, at least not in the cities...
A strong pair of hands rolled him over and Michael recognized the face of Inspector Peters through the white fog that was starting to cloud his mind.
“I’ll get you some help, my friend. Then we need to talk.”
Talk would be nice but would have to wait, Michael thought to himself. There were others he had to worry about.
Blackness closed in, thankfully blocking the pain.

The scenery Michael awoke to was considerably different from where he was used to regaining consciousness. It wasn’t a hospital this time but a guest bedroom, though a stand with I-V and transfusion bags on it was next to him meaning he was apparently in good hands. His shoulder hurt horribly but the pain in his side was probably the worst he’d felt in quite some time. 
“You’re extremely lucky, you know.”
The voice came from the doorway, making Michael turn over against the pain to see who it was. The woman was kindly and fairly attractive, though her long years of study and practice up through her mid-forties was starting to show in the few wrinkles on her face. Her hands were pasty white though her long fingers likely held a dexterity that any piano player would envy.
Michael could tell by her eyes that the woman had seen more than just a hospital operating room. She bore the shoulders of burden, a sign he had seen numerous times on those who had truly been through Hell.
“My luck seems to hold out pretty well for myself. Its when others are involved that I start to worry.” The drugs were thankfully kept to a minimum and the fog lifted quickly, allowing him to sip the tea the woman brought with his left hand.
“The knife in your side missed everything of importance but it’ll take a bit of time to heal inside. The cut on your hand was a bit more serious. I called in a friend who worked on it, but he said he can’t be sure just how much control you’ll regain, so you should probably expect a little loss of functionality. Without an x-ray I can’t be sure, but it looks like the injuries to your shoulder and ribs are just hairline fractures that should heal quickly.”
The woman sat down on the bed and pointed at the scars on his bare chest. “You’ve got quite a history here, it seems, so I’m not going to try to tell you how to get well again. You already know the basics.”
“Things happen.” He half smiled with the irony of the statement. Whatever his luck or fate may be, he was always seeking out the dangers that injured him the worst. “If there were no bad guys to fight, life would be pretty dull.”
“Spoken like a true fool.” The rebuke was honest but stated with an understanding that few seemed to have. This woman understood that a foolish disregard for personal safety was part of what was required to fight on the level of the evil that exists. Caution could be your mantra every day but there would be one time where everything rode on the decision to risk life and limb in a foolish manner, and trust that skill, courage, and fate would see you through.
“I’m Michael. Michael Christiansen.”
“Barbara Malloy. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
She spoke the Queen’s English, though her name was stated proudly as only an Irishwoman could. He knew then just what the woman had been doing that gave her the tired look.
“You were military?”
His observation stunned her for a moment, but a nod and smile showed that she did not really try to hide her past. “Field surgeon. I started out in a tent in Kuwait in ninety-one, and spent ten years jumping between troubles. I finally had enough and returned home, thankfully to find something better than the race wars that I had said goodbye to when I enlisted. I had spent six years prior to that in emergency rooms dealing with PIRA casualties. Suffice it to say, I know my way around knife and shrapnel wounds.”
She poked a finger at the scar in his side, the one he received in that warehouse before Jamie ended Ian Amherst and his torturous monologues. “This one looked bad.”
“It cost me someone I loved.” Michael had not been able to hide his feelings about Jamie since her death, regardless of the situation. His heart would not allow it any longer, not after the pain and wasted time hiding them had caused. “She wasn’t the first, and I suspect she’s not the last.”
His eyes had drifted to Inspector Peters who stood in the doorway, quickly reading in the man’s eyes that something was not good. The cyborg’s words had spoke of another attack on his friends, something he had been preparing himself for since he had regained consciousness.
“ I just came from what I presume is your apartment....” A weary sigh spoke of the tragedy he had seen. “I’m sorry, but it looks like there was some kind of raid or attack. A massive shoot-out occurred and it looks like there were four or five aggressors that broke in the door, catching everyone off-guard. Your friends responded, but I’m afraid all seven were killed.” He held out his hand to Michael and dropped a necklace in his hand, the necklace he took off of a woman he could sense was important to his friend.
Expecting the worst does not mean you are prepared to deal with the pain it involves. Michael’s eyes closed and he took several deep breaths, setting aside one bit of information while he ran his thumb across the pendant he had placed around Emily’s neck one special night only a year before. The pain was there, but it would take a little time to truly sink in. 
“It’s being investigated as a gang-related attack. The only real information that I could gather beyond the number of attackers was the type of weapons involved. Two sub-machine guns and two, maybe three, pistols. At a glance, I’d say they were Sig Sauer’s, but I also saw some Beretta casings. With all the guns laying around and the casings scattered everywhere, it’ll take the ballistics team some time to figure it all out. Whoever did this managed to get out alive, which is surprising given your peoples’ expertise.”
“I see...” It wasn’t just about him after all. Unless Lorenzo was stepping into Yakuza style tactics of killing everyone a traitor knows, whatever reason he had sent two or three teams out was certainly more important than simple revenge or silence. The question of “why” now had its first clue and that was something to start from. “Thank you, my friend. I, um... I think I would like to be alone now for a while. I would appreciate any more information that the forensics teams gather from the apartment, and if you could, arrange to have it left alone after my friends and the mess are cleaned up. I’d like to get some things out of there before I leave.”
“I understand.”
Barbara patted his hand in a friendly way and followed the inspector out, pausing a moment to look back at Michael to check again as to whether he would be all right. His eyes were closed in pain but her instincts told her that he was bigger than whatever pain could be thrown at him. He was already thinking...
Michael focused away from his tragedy to the piece of information that he had set aside. There were only seven bodies. Two were missing and one of them was the girl, or Peters would have said otherwise. Emmy was dead, but someone else had escaped and had probably left a trail for him to follow, intentional or otherwise. That person had habits that he could track down, and that meant he still had at least one skilled ally.
Time, however, was working against him. Whatever reason Lorenzo wanted Michael and his people out of the way was put on in a rush or it would have been done right and no one would have survived it. Lorenzo was clever and efficient, and his people were as dangerous as Michael could ever come up against. That he had escaped once was a testament to his and his peoples’ abilities, but there was no reason to believe that the Social Welfare Agency had slacked in their studies or forgotten what a black eye Michael had given them when he left.
No. Something big was going to happen, and it was something in which Michael himself would have to become involved in, in some capacity as to be in Lorenzo’s way. It was a leap of logic, but there was no other reason that came to mind that he would put so much on the line all of the sudden, just to take down someone who wasn’t a current threat.
His mind stopped to think about Emily again and he winced in pain, unsure whether it was his heart or his knife wound that hurt so much. Emily, the woman who had stood by him two years while he slaughtered the evil he sought out. Most women would have left at the first sign of trouble, the rest when he’d started killing people without remorse. She stuck by him through it all, and he loved her every moment of every day. There was no one else that could read his anguish in his eyes as he did the things he did. His soul cried out every time he had to extinguish a life in order to save the innocent, but he had learned to ignore it and push past, if only for a little while. Emily saw it all and knew him to be a good man, as she reminded him so many times. His ways were not exactly orthodox, but they were in good faith and for the betterment of mankind.
“I didn’t deserve her love...” But what could a guy do?
There were times to act and times to react. The only reaction to his current situation was to mourn his loss and get it over with, and then prepare for what was to come. It was the way of the focused mind and was certainly something he had done before. 
In a few days he’d be able to move well enough, and then he would start looking for his path through this next dark forest he had wandered into. He knew one thing for certain about such a path:
It would be a bloody one.