All the better to dispose of unwanted Bounty Hunters, my dear.

If the Bounty Hunter was on schedule—and he would be on schedule—C had ten minutes. Quickly, he stooped, ran his fingers along the slimy bricks, then smeared muck through his hair and over his face. Then he stuck his pistol in his waistband and peeled out of his trench coat. He let the coat fall into a water-filled pothole, stomped on it a few times, then inched his arms into the now-soggy, filthy garment. He slipped the pistol back into the right pocket of his trench coat, cupping the stippled grip in his palm, his right index finger in the trigger guard. Lolled back against the wall.

Ask for a handout and, while he’s digging for change, that’s when I shoot him—kill him and dump him in one of the bins.

The sounds were so indistinct and irregular, so textured by the hiss of rain on brick, he nearly missed them. Then his ears pricked to the hesitant tap of shoes against stone, one clap heavier than the other because the Bounty Hunter limped. C had to admire the man. He hadn’t dropped the limp even to get in out of the rain. Nerves tingling, C waited, mouth dry, pulse tripping in his veins. Ten steps more, then five, and now he saw the bobbing black finger of a shadow through the fringe of his lashes.

Five steps more, then four, three… and as the Bounty Hunter came alongside, C hauled up his head, just another drunk dragging himself out of a stupor. “Say, buddy,” he slurred and tottered forward a step to close the distance. “Say, buddy, can you…?”

There was the unmistakable snick of metal against metal, and the last thing C saw was something very bright, a steely arc. And then it didn’t matter because, by the time his brain translated—knife–something cut across his neck, going right to left. There was a weird, pulsing, splashing sound, like water from a fountain hitting tile. C was too surprised to feel pain and he was just reaching for his throat when there was another flash, this time left to right, that sheared off the tips of his left fingers in the bargain. And then pain didn’t matter because, suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.

Choking, C clawed at his neck as his knees buckled and his vision grayed. His lungs burned, and the hiss of the rain got whispery-thin and delicate as fine mist. As C sagged, his last conscious thought was how the smell of his blood was like this wagon he’d had as a kid: a wagon left out in the rain one too many times, until it was pocked with rust blisters that smelled of wet copper. The smell of his blood was like that.

The click.

The click happened when he saw the ISF agent pretending to be a drunk pretending to hold up the wall of his apartment building. Then—click. A switch was thrown in some deep, dark crevice of his brain, and suddenly it was like his head had filled with helium. His mind drifted, his consciousness tethered to his body like a kid’s balloon and he watched things unfold like a choreographed dance: the way he’d pivoted, snapping his right wrist. The way the knife darted like the razor-sharp tongue of a chameleon, uncoiling from its sheath beneath the cashmere sweater. The instant he’d felt that unmistakable transition as the knife sliced first air and then flesh. The agent’s shock, then confusion and, finally, dull-eyed terror as the second cut sliced his windpipe. And blood, lots of blood, spurting in thick ropes that splattered to the asphalt and mingled with mud, a pulpy wad of discarded newsprint and the general garbage that sluiced down the gutters in a good, hard rain.

Then he clicked again, his mind collapsing like a pirate’s spyglass. This was a good moment because he needn’t hurry, and he could revel in sensation. His tongue sneaked over his lips. Something warm, brackish. Blood. He looked down at the cashmere sweater, purple now with blood and rain. Too bad; he’d liked the sweater. He particularly liked the way it smelled of its previous owner: pipe tobacco and spicy aftershave. Then he flicked his wrists; the agent’s blood spun from the blades in teardrops. Another flick and each blade whirred into its hidden sheath, secured to his forearms beneath the old man’s sweater.

What lovely toys. Pity that he and the Bounty Hunter couldn’t have a little assassin-to-fellow-assassin chitchat. But the last he’d seen was the man’s naked backside floating serenely downstream after he’d shucked the Hunter out of his armor—and, lordy, lordy, if the man hadn’t been wearing a stitch except a pair of tatty boxers. Squatting, he studied the wisps of steam curling from cooling meat, the black blood a puddle drooling over concrete. Humming tunelessly, he withdrew a twelve-centimeter hunting knife from a sheath strapped to the small of his back and got to work. When he was done, he held the agent’s dripping, bug-eyed head in his left hand. The agent’s jaw was unhinged; his tongue lolled like a dead worm. On an impulse, he pressed his mouth to the agent’s cold lips, his tongue playing over the hard, uneven edges of the agent’s teeth, and discovered: The agent had an overbite.

“Alas, poor Yorick,” he said, with a sigh and a wink. “I hardly knew ya.”

Katana Tormark’s Journal

Early morning, 1 October 3134

When I was eight, my father killed his best friend. When I turned fifteen, my mother died, and when I was seventeen, I told my father I never wanted to see him again. Ever. So he went away, and that was that. Sort of. For one thing, I lied; I kind of wish he’d stuck around. My mother was a musicologist, and after my parents separated—this was right after my father killed Uncle—we often went to the Combine. I met one of the most important people in my life there. And I learned a lot about the Combine. A lot a lot and I had questions for my father he could never answer.

At the same time I was, like, this poster child for The Republic: counseling little kids, getting my citizenship ahead of schedule, saving Sir Reginald, going to Northwind, becoming duchess and then prefect while, at the same time, I’m studying bushido ; I’m pretty damn good at kendo kata ; I’m a better frigging samurai than my father and… you get the picture. The only thing missing is the holovid: She fights! She conquers! She even cooks! Like I’m some kind of new appliance.

Someone once said that, deep down in my gut, I must’ve known or figured out somehow that The Republic wasn’t really my home, or I was never at home in The Republic in the first place; take your pick. Probably right on both counts. I mean, think about it: You got this Republic, and we’re all supposed to love each other and not resort to violence and stuff. But here I am, kicking some serious butt—and getting rewarded for it. Schizophrenic, you ask me.

And here’s another thing. As soon as that network went down, I finally saw how fragile the whole thing was. Factions and planets connected by a network of threads as insubstantial as a spider’s web. One big blow and the web disintegrated, and all of a sudden, it’s every woman for herself.

So why am I doing this? Beats me… no, that’s a lie. I know why. I dream about it a lot, and sometimes memory and dream blur: a holovid caught in a continuous loop projected onto the blackness in my brain, and no off button.

Early summer’s what I remember: the buzz of cicadas and the crunch of their husks under my feet. I’m eight; we’re on Ancha, where I was born. I remember, or maybe I dream it—it’s all the same—my mother and I had eaten dinner alone that night. My father, Akira, was gone on some business or other, and I knew that something was wrong. My mother played with her food, moving clumps of rice here and there with the points of her chopsticks the way I did when she made something I really hated. (Broiled squid was the worst; there was just something about those tentacles.) Afterward, she played her shakuhachi. Even though she wasn’t a Combine citizen, my mother was crazy for all things Japanese. She was partial to the instrument because of honkyoku, Zen meditation music. My mother’s been dead for almost twenty years, but I can still conjure up her hands, the milk-chocolate cast of her skin and long, slender fingers caressing the ancient bamboo flute. Her shakuhachi was lacquered red with urushi and cashew, with a lion done in black brushstroke, and a kanji inscribed in delicate calligraphy that translated to lion’s heart. When my mother played, you lost track of who played whom; whether the instrument coaxed sadness from my mother’s heart, or she simply breathed sorrow. The Zen masters say that shakuhachi is music from the soul, and that’s what I hear in my mind’s ear: the sighing, mournful cry of a wounded heart.