You don't know how you got here

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra and Hei.
WHAT: Two Contractors after a messy hit.

[ The assignment is complete. After a fashion. ]

[ The target's stretch limousine explodes, a time-bomb hurtling at eighty miles per hour. Hei verifies the detonation in the side-view mirror of their getaway van. The brilliant flames glow across the express lane, a bonfire on a humid July night, the deadly cacophony fifty yards behind him on the I-95. The ferocity from the detonation rolls through the atmosphere, juddering both sides of the interstate and adjacent roads like in a San Francisco earthquake. Brake lights flare in a screeching chorus. Behind Hei, beyond the blazing limousine, four lanes of interstate crowded with cars, trucks, and motorcycles careen to an ear-splitting halt, too late for speed demons to swerve and avoid flying debris. ]

[ Their van keeps going. The target is dead. The botched mission completed in less than forty-eight hours. The teflon-coated politician inside the limo had coasted through a dream-life of caviar and champagne, bodyguards at his side, girls in his lap, boys paid to shoot and kill and girls trained to smile and please. A man who didn't hesitate to have his enemies dragged to the desert and fed to the buzzards. ]

[ A prominent Syndicate faction had become one of his problems. And so the politician became one of theirs. ]

[ All BK201 knows is what he'd been briefed on, during the overseas assignment. And that, in itself, isn't much. The less the killing-machines knew, the better. What mattered was that they rectified the situation as they'd been ordered to. ]

[ The remote trigger that sparked blast is still in Hei's gloved hand. With a zzzt and a curl of smoke, he shorts it out. Tosses it out the window, while their van lurches from right lane to left lane to right lane, threading traffic like a bulky needle, becoming a fast-moving blur vanishing down I-95. Hei exhales, absorbing the metal's chill; the van is a freezer. Across him is the only other survivor of the hit: NC-108. Korra. Both their faces are crusted in dried blood, clothes grimy, hair in tufts. But everything else is intact -- unlike the rest of their teammates. The politician managed to weed them out before they'd fully infiltrated his base. Two were murdered in their hotel room by a hitman dressed as a waiter. The other three were machine-gunned on the street last night during dinner in a café by hostiles in police uniforms. The Syndicate is still recovering their mangled bodies. ]

[ Hei and Korra were advised to abort the operation and contact their respective handlers. Neither had bothered. Hei, because his inner-completionist refused to leave the job undone. Korra, because -- let's face it -- she has a streak, miles wide, that compels her to throw herself into the maelstrom of disaster, daredevilry the cover for an easy exit. During their firefight with the politician's hitmen, Hei had to drag her away a few times from almost certain disembowelment or death -- narrow saves that made Korra grin like she was high, the fevery glow off her skin like an irradiated firefly. ]

[ Hei can't say it bodes well. Not for her -- or her long-term career. ]

[ It doesn't matter. They've both succeeded at this mission. Five dead teammates equal five less cuts on the final payment. There's a tidy sum waiting for the two of them. A quarter of a million dollars, each. Hei's cellphone has already vibrated with the message: FUNDS TRANSFERRED. ]

[ It's a living, he thinks, gazing out the window with a sedate veneer but a tensile edge to his jaw. Forty-eight hours, five eliminated associates, and he's earned $250,000. And all it took was a few scrapes and bruises, a tricky full-immersion identity, and a block of old-fashioned C-4. ]

[ The Syndicate's safehouse is in an old motel, one of twelve pink stucco cottages strung out around a gravel parking lot. The cabin reeks of must, and like everything that night, humidly salty. Switching on the rattling air-conditioner, Hei conducts his careful sweep for bugs across the room. Satisfied, he shrugs off his coat -- stiff with caked blood -- before glancing impassively toward Korra, ]

Take the first shower.

[ He's not being a gentleman. But the widest window for enemy retaliation -- and the Syndicate's own post-mission clean-ups -- occurs in the twelve hours after the successful hit. If they're ambushed, Hei doesn't plan to be naked, dripping wet and unarmed. ]

Comments

[anatural]

[Clearly this Amber is a major operational threat. Not just because she made Hei go all looney -- the way Hei treats Korra is proof enough that he isn't nearly as rational as he pretends to be -- but because she found them. She was able to sneak past the defenses of two Contractors and sneak out again. There is no way to know to what extent this hideout is compromised.

Korra wants to know more about this threat, what kind of person could get this strong a reaction from BK-201.

Still, she has to point out the obvious.]

You're being an idiot. We should be going to somewhere more secure.

[mortemscintilla]

[ She already knows Amber's name. As far as Hei's concerned, she's in much deeper in his business than he'd prefer. He doesn't want her on Amber's radar. Not a flicker, or a blip. UB001 is like a golden spider, spinning webs of spycraft across Hei's entire life, every shiver of a strand alerting her to invaders who will fast become prey, It's her fault his team is dead. It's because of her that Pai is gone. To be around her -- even for a millisecond -- is to inhale toxins so dangerously secret that they fuse into your bloodstream. Like in those dreams where you speak Latin even though you don't, you will awaken one day and exhale-inhale disaster like you've embodied it your whole life. ]

[ It's ironic. Because that's exactly what the espionage world whispers about BK201. ]

[ Korra's words bounce off him as harmlessly as pebbles. He's aware she's right. If they constructed a fifty foot neon sign that screams DANGER, it would be more subtle. Amber's got him in a tizzy, reacting emotionally rather than taking steps to mitigate the situation. ]

[ It doesn't matter. He's already at the door. ]

You need to go somewhere more secure.

[ A bored voice, a conductor saying Tickets, please for the hundred thousandth time. He doesn't stay to argue further. With a rustle of his coat, he's already gone. ]

[anatural]

[And Korra follows. She doesn't bother hiding it; Hei would probably notice her anyway but register her as a threat. This way she'll be an annoyance, if he pays attention to her at all. There's clearly only one thing on his mind.]

1/2

[mortemscintilla]

[ Stupid girl. ]

[ Hei is aware that she's tailing him. But it will be easy enough to shake her off. It is no reflection on her skills as a street artist. It is just that tailing someone efficiently requires an organized team of associates. In fact, most spycraft is the same: an exercise in uneasy trust, the science of getting people to work with and for you without ever compromising the essential solitude of your position. ]

[ Except for that debacle with Amber. There, he was compromised in every sense. He'd known UB001's reputation as a calculating puppet-master, a ruthless hellraiser. He'd known everything he stood to lose if he misstepped in their chess-game, if he made himself vulnerable to the outpouring of emotion. ]

[ Yet he'd done it anyway. He'd trusted a viper. She'd only been interested in him as prey -- an interest he'd mistaken for affection. He'd invented a heart for her -- only to be bitten by her fangs. That was the rotten core of the truth. ]

[ The trip to the address is a blur. He is wired, hyper-alert, but he isn't fully conscious, either. Mostly he navigates by robotic instinct, a practiced tradecraft of twists and turns to brush off Korra, and tries not to think. Always, before these meetings with Amber, he feels like Schrödinger's cat, trapped in a steel box, neither dead nor alive, waiting for the intervention of some outside event to resolve his ambiguous state once and for all and deliver him from purgatory. ]

[ (Except ... doesn't he feel that way every fucking minute?) ]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The spot is near Pine Mountain Buddhist Temple. A park, quiet and lush, almost unnaturally green. And completely silent. The low grumblings of the city are muted by the threadbare trees and the stone statues, in various states of ruin and repair, which rise around the park's perimeter. Or the silence could somehow be the fault of the woman sitting on one of the benches, with her pretty white hand on the handle of her umbrella, presenting Hei with a pale, familiar profile and a perfect cascade of hair as green as summer grass. It seems possible. ]

[ The adrenaline -- or is it anticipation? -- that streaks through Hei is incongruously brittle and bright. With a slow exhale, he hangs back. Scans the perimeter again, because this is perfect, too fucking perfect. Left and right: clear. No problems behind him. But further ahead... ]

[ There. Four punch-permed, stocky men in jeans and nondescript jackets, their mouths twisted in permanent ugly sneers. They are half-turned away from him. But he flags them easily: some guys are built for stealth and skill, others, for intimidation. These four are obviously of the latter variety. Mob central casting -- not Syndicate. But not individuals Amber would hire, either. ]

[ They are the same types who ambushed Hei and Korra at the bar. ]

[ But why are they there? What is Amber doing with them? Had she bargained to lure Hei out, so they could kill him? That makes no sense. If she wanted, she could've disclosed the location of Korra's safehouse. So why...? ]

[ That's when he notices a small flock of pigeons that is crossing through, hanging in the air at eye-level. Blinking, Hei steps closer -- and then the air, except it isn't the air, it is the space that contains the air, the reality that contains the air -- shakes like a square of Jell-o, then freezes. ]

[ The whole park is frozen. Including those men. The realization flares parallel to a sick epiphany: She's called me here ... to kill them. Not the other way around. Incredulous, he glances toward Amber. But the bench is empty. The flapping of the pigeons overhead breaks the silence; the frozen moment is liquid again. ]

[ A beat later, a bullet caraams near Hei's feet, tossing up clods of grassy soil. Whirling, he logs a second group of men, same type as the first, concealed behind the hedgerow. ]

[ Shit. ]

[ Amber is gone. All that remains is the hit-team ordered to take him and Korra out. She's just assembled them -- like inanimate chesspieces -- in a venue where he can fight them. ]

[anatural]

[He's certainly not working at his best. By all rights, Korra shouldn't have been able to follow him — but she is. When they reach the temple, she hangs back, waiting to see what happens.

Then - everything freezes. It gives Korra the chance to notice the bruisers. A trap. In the next breath, she changes her mind. Something about it doesn't seem right.

Then she's confronted by a woman with green hair and a disconcerting smile. Let him do this alone. It will make him feel better. Then Shh, no questions.

Korra stares, dumbfounded, as the woman leans in and kisses her, a brief peck on the lips, but enough to leave a trace of her lipstick. And then she's gone.

What the hell was that?]

[mortemscintilla]

[ What. The. Hell. Was. That? ]

[ There is a brief burst of light in the corner of his vision that disorients Hei. But only for a moment. In the next beat, everything speeds up, time crunching together like pleats in a discordant harmonium. The armed men converge on him like a hailstorm -- a foray of bullets strafing across the grass. They are determined, and merciless, and good shots. And they give him a fight. ]

[ Finally, a real fight. And oh, in the blood-red slipstream of the fugue, it is good. ]

[ Good to wield wires and blades, mind and muscle, with the same deadly synchrony. Good to break into a sweat as they play cat and mouse with him -- and then, better when he flips the tables, makes them the mice instead. Good to cut them down one by one, until there are only a pair of stragglers left. The first, battered and bruised, is trying to stagger to safety, doubled over. Hei trips him up with one sharp kick, sending him sprawling forward onto his face. Rather than zap his lights out with a single touch, he executes a knee drop onto his spine, mashes his face into the grass, and swipes his blade up under his neck, an efficient twist of the wrist. There is a wet gurgling noise, half cry, half bubbling liquid. ]

[ Leaping clear of the spray, Hei turns to the sole survivor -- on his ass now, scuttling backward. He bumps up against a stone wall and starts to struggle to his feet. In the grip of a cold, white-hot rage, Hei kicks him in the balls and the man folds forward with a grunt. Reaches out, gloved palm molded to his skull -- and delivers a sizzling death-charge. His victim thrashes like a live fish across a burning-hot skillet, before crumpling. ]

[ With the bodies littered across the grass, there is no sound left at all but Hei's faltering heart, beating drumlike against muscles in which nothing moves, and this is the center of silence. ]

[ A drum waning, silence growing more full. ]

[ Exhaling slowly, Hei wipes his smeary blade across his pant-leg before sheathing it. His arm throbs: there is deep gash from a bullet-graze across the fleshy part of the bicep, sluicing blood, the skin laid open neat and deep. But nothing fatal. Nothing that can't be ignored over his crashing rage over the knowledge that, once again, Amber played him like a violin, then left the tune aborted, no sense or structure. No coda. ]

[anatural]

[Korra's been in bars on St. Patrick's Day; she doesn't touch her lips in surprise or confusion. But she does feel a little discombobulated as she stomps towards him.]

What the hell was that all about?

[Even as she speaks, she draws water from the nearby pond to deal with his injury.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Her voice rocks Hei to a semblance of life. Inhaling sharply, he swings to face her -- blindsided yet entirely unsurprised to find her there. His eyes flick across the lipstick smudged across her mouth, logging it without fully absorbing its meaning. He's still stymied by the enormity of his own fury and disappointment. He'd been so close to getting his hands on Amber. So fucking close. And like every single time, she'd slipped like mist from between his fingers, elusive as all the answers he wants from her. ]

[ In her place, there is Korra. She smells like fresh air; it is swirling off her skin, circulating in her clothes -- a reminder of how sweat-soaked and grimy and bloodsplattered he is. ]

[ Hei doesn't answer her. His gaze sweeps across the park, logging anything unusual. Operational faculties kick-start with a drunken jolt, as if the machinery of his mind was jammed: his muscles are still taut with adrenaline, and he forces them to ease into a more innocent shape. ]

We should get out of here.

[anatural]

Give me two seconds. I need to stop the bleeding. [She bends the water to his arm, using it to direct his energy to patch up the wound on his arm. Just enough to stop the bleeding.]

Any suggestions where we should go? [She'll bug him about the mystery woman once they are safe.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The water shimmers in a band around Hei's arm: the torn skin tingles, a localized zone of knitting flesh, the gash melting away before his eyes to leave a puffy pink mark. A dim part of Hei wonders: Why does she care? It makes no sense why she's healing him. Why she'd followed him at all. The nature of Contractors -- all Contractors -- is to use, not to aid. So what's her game? Is she angling for something -- cash, protection, favors? Does she have an agenda that she believes could coincide with his -- so it's better to join forces? ]

[ A side of him whispers that maybe she isn't up to anything at all -- but that gets lost when the part of him (the same part that automatically maps out exits when he enters a room) scoffs. He can figure out her motives later. What matters is what is happening now. ]

[ Once the torn flesh has sealed itself, he flexes his arm experimentally. Without looking at her, he says, ]

Out of this state, for one.

[ Arizona. Maybe New Mexico. Not Nevada -- especially not Las Vegas. Too many cameras, too easy for tails and threats to blend into the crowds. They need to head somewhere isolated. ]

[anatural]

That must've been some breakup. You sure have a way with women.

[Korra returns the water to the pond and wipes her hands on her pants. Most of her safehouses are on the east coast; they'd have to fly, which isn't ideal right now. Bus stations have too many security cameras, and if shit goes down, there are too many people who could complicate matters.]

How are you at hotwiring cars?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Irritation flares bright at her remark, then dies out. No point wondering why she'd assume Amber is an ex-lover: few relationships evoke a reaction that violently visceral. But he can tell she is unaware of Amber's significance in the espionage world -- or her betrayal of the Syndicate. She is just being mildly catty in the true stylings of her gender, but her tone lacks bite and depth. She has no insight into the dramas and disasters of Hei's life. It's safer that way. ]

[ Blinking through a fog of headache and slow-creeping weariness, he starts walking. Whatever their plans for evading enemy crosshairs, it's imperative to get out of the park first. ]

Depends on the model.

[anatural]

How about that one? [She points to a vehicle just half a block away. Nice enough to probably be a family's second vehicle, not nice enough for remote deactivation.] There's a Rent-a-Lemon twenty miles out of town. We can switch it for another car there.

[mortemscintilla]

No lemons.

[ He's not planning to leave a paper trail -- even with aliases. There are a dozen venues -- hospitals, auto repair shops, car dealerships, gas stations, schools, underground garages, where the vehicles are easy pickings. Night, day, it doesn't matter. Between the amount of skill shared between them, he and Korra should have little trouble finding a string of getaway cars. ]

[ Using one of his wires as a slim jim, he slips it down the window to unhook the door's lever, springing the lock. Then it's a simple matter of leaning beneath the dashboard, wrenching loose the cover on the steering column, and fishing for the starter wire bundle. After a few fumbling tries, the engine catches life. The upholstery stinks of fried chicken, empty cans and tissues strewn everywhere, a yellow-hair-tangled comb here, a half-empty tube of lipgloss there. Probably a teenage girl's car. ]

[ Theirs now. ]

[ At a sedate pace, he pulls the car onto the road. The night is balmy. A soft breeze is drawn through the open windows as they cruise through the streets; Hei keeps an eye out for cops, but also for tailgaters that might be on enemy payroll. ]

[ Without glancing at Korra, he murmurs, ]

We'll split once we're in New Mexico.

[ He knows a cobbler in Albuquerque who can fix them immaculate passports, visas, ID's -- for a price. Enough to get Hei out of the country, and Korra to wherever she plans to go. ]

[anatural]

[Okay, well, they could do it that way too. Korra doesn't much care. Right now she's interested in one thing.]

So. Who was that Amber chick? [Why did she lure Hei out of the safe house? What exactly is her ability? And why did she kiss her? (Though Korra is hoping to figure out that question on her own...)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei keeps his face schooled to polite wood, a trick of expressive expressionlessness that's almost a coded warning. The road they are on is perfectly straight, with grassy dunes on either side. The street lights burn orange, and once in a while, a rabbit speeds out into the headlights, eye glowing like a bike reflector, leaping for the other side. ]

[ He doesn't so much as glance at Korra. Yet he can see her in his peripheral vision, the faintest, oblique reflection off the windshield, a full picture solidifying from fragments of color and motion. Her face, even at its most inexpressive, is like a proverbial window to the soul, and Hei feels he can look right through that lucid mask and see all of the girl's inner processes at work: colorful gears turning, a chaos of cogs clicking and tumbling. ]

[ Blandly, ]

There's a Burger-King up ahead. We should stock up on bottled water and snacks.

[ re: It's none of your business. ]

[anatural]

Nice try, but you don't get to dodge the subject that easy. That woman infiltrated my safe house, lured you into an obvious trap, and she knows my face. Who the hell is she?

[mortemscintilla]

[ This time, Hei does glance at her, his eyes glinting a semaphore of hostility and coldness. He wishes she'd shut up. Is half-tempted to reach out and zap her out cold, so he can drive undisturbed, without her high-strung chatter pinging off his brain. ]

[ Anyway. Narrating his history with Amber is impossible. Not just because of his penchant for secrecy, but because the entire tale is colored with surrealism. The half-surgical half-mythical jargon of spies came into being out of a need for ordinary words for extraordinary things, and so when it is pieced out into operational phrases the story doesn't seem believable. It has the smoky glamour of the myths which had gone around the training camps, which had circulated in South America: a Contractor cycling half the length of the jungle with only a day's rations; the double-agent in Peru who gambled with SIS and whose dangerous cover was that of a black market dealer willing to give enemy soldiers the best cut of what he had; a cunning honeytrap who vied two top agents against each other and pocketed the profits untouched by the political rivalries. ]

[ What happened in South America was unbelievable. Even in Hei's memory, its likeness is that of a Bosch or Dali painting: ludicrous, impossible, horrific -- yet so palpably real. ]

[ Eventually, flatly -- half-deflection, half-concession, ]

Once you've gotten in touch with your handler, you can ask them.

[ UB001. BK201. The Black Reaper. Heaven's Gate. Their stories are a paradox -- infamous, but in the most secretive way. ]

[anatural]

[And still not at all satisfactory.]

My handler couldn't find his ass if the Syndicate didn't give him instructions how to poop. I make it a policy not to ask him anything that doesn't involve parroting back what the Syndicate says.

[So spill.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The expectation of full disclosure sizzles in her words. Hei's hands curl and uncurl around the steering wheel. His expression stays one of flat, stone-faced order, and he refrains from pointing out that unless she shuts up, he knows at least twenty ways to knock her unconscious with the heel of his palm. ]

[ He doesn't, though. He keeps his eyes fixed on the glowing yellow line of the road, the silence between them a heavy thing, filled as if with mute rhythms of a countdown -- the signal of either an eruption or a disgorgement. ]

[ Eventually, ]

NC108 -- [ The words start out bland, conveying nothing but the coldest professional warning. The facade doesn't last. An exhale, a few beats, before his look dissolves into something quieter, almost weary, ] Look. Some things are need-to-know only. And you don't need to know. [ Questions are dangerous things: sometimes blindly, sometimes falteringly, but somehow instinctively, they have a way of leading you back to the truth. And the truth is something he'd prefer to keep this girl -- a neophyte, barely a child -- far away from. ]

Like they say, you can't go home again. You're as aware of that as I am, Korra.

[ He feels words stick like barbs in his throat, without knowing why. He can't remember if he's ever spoken her name before today. The way he voices it, exhales it at wistful leisure over his tongue, it almost becomes an endearment. (But is it sincere? No. Yes. Maybe. If that's what you want to hear.) ]

[anatural]

[Says the man responsible for making that her life. The way he sighs her name makes her skin crawl. He has no right to say her name like that. He doesn't care about her. The only reason he'd talk like this is if he was trying to manipulate her.

It's a fucking clumsy attempt.]

Like I said. She invaded my safehouse. She knows my face. She KISSED me. So tell me who the hell she is. I Need To Know.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Is he trying to manipulate her? Is he being honest? That's like asking a colorblind man to paint a rainbow. He can't grasp the subtleties, because for him dishonesty is an inherent way of operating. (Yet ... it doesn't necessarily mean his words aren't ingrained with a seed of truth. He's kept her -- carefully, deliberately -- on the outside margin of his life. Still, his sense of responsibility, always sore, has dogged him -- he'd dragged Korra into this mess, and she's had a way of getting into worse trouble since then. Her continued existence is as a victim that Hei has silently added to the long bill of his conscience, though he knows he was as powerless to stop her recruitment as she was. Her fate was sealed the day she became a Contractor. ]

[ There is no reaction when Korra says She kissed me. Yet disquiet spreads through his chest like black ink dropped in water. ]

You don't, [ is his only answer, and to anybody else it might sound mild but -- there is a coded warning in that tone. To tell Korra about an inkling of his and Amber's history, the war, the vanishing Gate, would be to hand the girl a faulty grenade that could erupt at any time. ]

[ Eventually, with a cruelty that conceals the extent of the lie, ]

Amber takes an interest in whoever I value. Or whoever she perceives I do. You don't qualify. So stay out of it.

[anatural]

Well gee, I'd love to, except I'm ALREADY INVOLVED. [HOW DUMB CAN A CONTRACTOR POSSIBLY BE?!??!! Korra could scream. Instead, she rolls down the window and sticks her hand out, needing some kind of pressure without having the room to lash out like she'd like to.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ As dumb and obtuse and infuriating as he needs to be. Whatever keeps her at an arm's length, because each step she takes closer to the truth is like descending into quicksand. Korra may be a formidable Contractor. But she is still just a chit of a girl no matter how tough a game she talks. Put her in Amber's crosshairs and it'd be like plopping a chick in the cat's mouth. ]

[ Stretching out a crick in his neck, he keeps his eyes on the road, ignoring the small whirr of the window, the cool rustle of the wind. The silence around them boils with things that can never be spoken, or if spoken, never really be heard. And to be honest, it's better that way. At the brightly-lit drive-thru for Burger King, he swerves off to order an enormous amount of food, water, and coffee, while keeping an eye on the gradually lightening sky, the sparse traffic, his body reverberating with the after-effects of a night of relentless adrenaline and exhaustion. ]

[ Handing Korra the fragrant bags -- the gesture offhand, suggesting an olive branch -- he pulls out again at whiplash speed. ]