This place may be very securely bunkered up, but breaking into places like that is easy if one knows what they’re doing. That’s like the fourth thing Hannah and the others learned how to do in Mikey’s bootcamp. And, as far as Hannah could estimate, he is likely going through it now with the babies. While she gets to have the real fun. “Hann,” he’d said, “Eliza wants you to do a little murder for her. Do you mind?” Like Hannah would ever mind. But then again, he also wasn’t really asking. Mikey doesn’t actually ask questions that are questions much. Some of his questions are statements, some are orders, some are jokes. Rarely are they looking for an answer. Almost never an answer he does not already know.
As she moves in through the jury-rigged window, Hannah muses on what this could be. She can think of about seven people Eliza might want her to murder. Eight if you count that rude little girl from Portus Valentium that shot at her. Knowing Eliza, they probably shared a moment or three, and that’s actually one of the more solid indicators for people Eliza wants dead. No other reason, Hannah reminds herself, just statistics. Unfortunately, the Project Manager has been getting more rah-rah about Hadrian with age, so the fugitive probably won’t get to stab Mikey in the throat and watch him drown in his own blood. But hey, she thinks to comfort herself, that can come later, after we’ve figured out a good retirement plan.
Eliza’s safehouse is really under-decorated. Hannah decides she should tell her that. It looks almost identical to the others she’s seen in the last couple months on the lam. Well, mostly on the lam. Eliza really should at least get some kind of terrarium to add a bit of color to things. Sheesh. Sliding across the living room, Hannah moves towards the bedroom. The door’s alarmed. Adorable. No, A-door-able. The assassin files that one away with the other jokes to annoy Mikey later. A small wire and magnet later, the bedroom door slides open a crack. Not much, just enough for Hannah’s lithe form to squeeze on through.
Eliza looks adorable all alone on that giant, king size mattress. Hannah stops moving. She feels the need to take a quick picture of the moment while she figures out how to play this. You only get one chance at a first impression with a former lover after years without speaking when the last two times you saw one another you were on opposite sides of heated firefights. She knows she has to make it count. Carefully, she moves herself onto the bed. Keeping two points always on the bed to prevent too much jostling, she maneuvers herself to straddling the sleeping diplomat. Hannah moves slowly, making certain not to wake her old friend and more recent enemy, but possibly future friend again. Once on top of the woman, she leans in very close to Eliza’s ear and says, softly but at a normal volume, “Hey, babe. Who are you dreaming about?”
Eliza bolts awake, tries to roll away from the unknown threat. Hannah suspects she didn’t actually hear the question. Eliza, unfortunately for her, forgets a moment about the fact she’s recovering from severe injury and winces in pain as she writhes. Then, she finally sees it’s Hannah on top of her. “Really?” the diplomat complains.
“Needed to be sure you were alone. That means this or the shower. This way was easier.”
“And you do love easy,” Eliza half-jokes.
Hannah doesn’t laugh. After all, she’s only half here for this sort of nonsense. “So,” she asks the woman still pinned under her, “I asked you a question. It’s rude not to answer.”
“I know,” Eliza said, “But I don’t want you to kill me.”
So she hears the question, Hannah thinks to herself, and the answer isn’t her. That doesn’t matter much. Why would she think the answer would make murderous thoughts arise in her brain? “I won’t. No more than I already do at least.” Partly to emphasize this point, and partly because she knows that Eliza really likes it, Hannah slides one of her knives out from its ankle holster to trace the blade across the diplomat.
The pause was long, and dense. Hannah could see Eliza growing flush. Finally the woman admits, “It was Marietta, rescuing me.”
That girl again, Hannah’s first thought was finding a way to have one kill the other brutally. Incitement would be easy enough. But then she saw the truth of the matter. At least, the more important element of the truth. That worthless woman had been rescuing Eliza from her. “And why would I want to kill you for dreaming about me?” Hannah asks the woman. She presses down a little harder, drawing the faintest hint of blood.
Eliza lets out a laugh that sounds a bit too breathy, like she is forcing a different sort of noise to be a laugh. Hannah smirks, leans into the diplomats ear cheek to cheek, and whispers equally breathily, “So who is it you want me to give a one way ticket to oblivion?” She lightly bites the lobe after that for emphasis. And because she’s enjoying herself. After all, this is her first interaction in the last three months that no one was watching. She’s going to have some fun.
“Know how you got out?” the diplomat asks, reaching for something under her pillow. Before Hannah could react, Eliza has a gun pointed at her side. With a pained grunt, Eliza rolls the pair of them over and sits up, keeping the gun trained on the woman.
Hannah bites her lower lip. “Vividly,” she says quietly. She’s betting Mikey didn’t share how exactly she got out, or why. And she’s betting Eliza doesn’t know, seeing as Mikey was still very much not fired and/or arrested for the assassination a high ranking and well respected member of Insec. So Hannah figures she’d keep the specifics of who caused the explosion and outages to herself.
“Well, Mike and I think a certain old gentleperson might have used that opportunity to extricate themselves as well,” Eliza explains.
Hannah nods. Mike. Who in the universe would call Mikey that. “That is adorable,” Hannah replies before pushing off the bed to sit up straight herself, and not-entirely-coincidently slamming Eliza back down onto it. “But does not answer my question.”
As she hits the bed another breathy grunt of pain leaves Eliza’s mouth, and the gun falls out of her grasp. “Newman. I want you to kill Newman.”
Hannah stands up. “Fun,” she says, her mind already thinking about how to track down the master of disguise and terrorist. “I’ll stop by for payment, among other things, once it’s done.” She leans down and kisses her old flame and adds in a whisper, “If it will make you feel any better, I can kill that rude little girl who got in between us in your dream, too.”
Eliza seems barely able to breathe at all as she forces out. “Please. Don’t. Company. Needs. Her.” Of course, Hannah muses, that silly rah-rah attitude. Some day she’ll remember the good old days of backstabbing and corporate climbing.
“If you insist, dear,” Hannah replies, “And you should really lock your doors better. It only took me like seven minutes to get through all those silly layers of security unnoticed.” She slides back out of the door, carefully resetting the alarm. Then, she waits. Not because she needs to for security purposes or because of timing for the guards or whatever, but because Hannah needs to hear confirmation that she still has it. Once the intentionally muffled noises start back up from the bedroom, Hannah smirks and slips back out the way she came, resetting each circumvented element of security as she moves. Finally, once she’s walking along the street, she pings Mikey. He picks up. “Mikey, you could have told me it was Newsies,” she complains.
Mikey chuckles over the call. “But where’s the fun in that?”
“Unfortunately, my fun ended when my brain started trying to find the best way to remove the old dude’s head from his body. You know how I get when fun things like that come up.”
“Your fun?” Mikey asks, knowing full well what Hannah was implying.
Hannah laughs. “Yeah, well, hers started right back up again after I left,” Hannah answers. Then, with a grin, she adds, “Well, right after I left as far as she could tell.”
“Gross,” Mikey jokes, “Newman isn’t particularly easy to track down, you remember.”
“Yep,” Hannah says, “But I’ve got a plan. Mind if I borrow that prosthetics kid, Charlie?”
“So long as you aren’t going to sleep with him,” Mikey answers.
It was Hannah’s turn to make a joke, “Now that you mention it...”
“Remember who taught you all your worst, most fun habits,” Mikey threatens, before he pauses to do something on his tablet. He’s right, of course. There were only about five people who Hannah was pretty sure could actually kill her. Like, intentionally kill her. Plenty could get a lucky shot or two in, but only five who could hunt her down an murder her if they really wanted to. And in a wonderful turn of events one was imprisoned for life on a farmworld as requested retirement and another is about to become wormfood. “Warehouse seventeen off dock four,” Mikey adds.
“Don’t worry, I won’t sleep with him,” Hannah unnecessarily reassures her sort of boss. Not sort of. He is her boss. They just both have an understanding that she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to.
“I wasn’t worried,” Mikey says back coldly. And Hannah knows he wasn’t. Because when Mikey makes a threat, he follows through. She of all people knows that. Last threat was, ‘Go off mission and I’ll have you arrested.’ Hence why she spent more than a few years in the supermax.
She gets on the tram to Dock Four. The plan is simple. She sets some fun little explosives in a spa, checks in as Eliza, using prosthetics to mimic her appearance, though use one of her false identities. One of the ones she got after Newman was imprisoned. Because he will think that she would think that those IDs are safe to use, and everyone knows she really needs a break after her last mission before her next one. Because of the slight case of Hannah launching a rocket into the room she was in, engulfing her in flames, and murdering half the people with her. Set the explosives, put on the prosthetics to become her, stare at herself in the mirror wearing only the prosthetics for a bit, get some nice spa treatments, get stabbed by Newman during the massage, activate the detonator to set him off balance and get the upper hand, use his own stabbing instrument to filet him in the way she decides in the moment is the most enjoyable for her, leave before Insec shows up, break back into Eliza’s safehouse, have a very slightly different sort of enjoyable time, get paid, and probably be escorted by the diplomat right back to Mikey. Nice, simple, straightforward plan.
Hannah walks into the warehouse. Polly is in the rafters, guns trained on her. “Hi Pol,” Hannah says, “Where’s the little baby I was promised.”
“Hannah,” Polly scolds her, “We made you promise, no more eating babies.”
Hannah let out an exaggerated sigh. “No eating them, no sleeping with them, man you guys and your rules are really ruining my fun.” There’s a slight whimper from one of the large containers. Excellent, that’s where Charlie is. To help set him at ease, she laughs as she walks over and knocks on the container. “We’re mostly joking, they only made me promise not to ravage you,” Hannah informs the young graduate.
Charlie opens the crate, revealing a full setup for sculpting prosthetics and applying makeup. “I was told to provide you with whatever you needed.”
“Thanks, girl,” Hannah says to him, stripping out of her clothes and sitting down in one of the shipping container’s chairs. Pulling out her phone, she opens up the picture of the sleeping Eliza. “If you don’t mind too terribly, I need to look as close to her as you can manage.” Hannah’s not sure which makes Charlie more nervous, her sitting naked in front of him, or the naked picture of someone who probably used to give guest lectures to in his Intercorporate Politics classes.
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